The inner chamber and the inner life

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PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY
PRESENTED BY

Wilbur 11. Smith

BV 4811 .M87 1905
Murray, Andrew, 1828-1917
The inner chamber and the
inner life

THE INNER CHAMBER

AND

THE INNER LIFE

DR. ANDREIV MURRAY'S
COMPLETE IVORKS

Fleming H, Revell Company is
the only authorised American pub-
lisher of Dr. Murray's Works, of
xvhieh a complete descriptive list
mil he found at the end of this
volume. Royalties are paid Dr.
Murray on all the issues there
named and by him applied to the
furtherance of his work in South
Africa.

THE

Inner Chamber
The Inner Life

BY

THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY, D.D.

New York Chicago Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDOK AND EDINBURGH

Copyright, 1905, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago : 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto : 27 Richmond Street, W.
London : 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street

PREFACE

The Inner Chamber suggests thoughts of the ut-
most importance. The daily need of retirement
and quiet; the true Spirit of prayer; the Devo-
tional reading of God^s Word; the Fellowship
with God for which these are meant and by which
alone they bring a blessing; the Spiritual Life
which they are meant to strengthen and fit for
daily duty in intercourse with the world; the
Service for the Kingdom of God in Soul-winning
and Intercession — all these truths have their share
in making our devotions a source of joy and of
strength. In this little book I have not attempted
to take them up systematically, but I hope that
the fragments I have given may bring help to some
in the cultivation of the hidden life and its inter-
course with God.

In this South African country there are various
diseases that affect our orange trees. One of them
is popularly known by the name of the root-disease.
A tree may still be bearing, and an ordinary ob-
server may not notice anything wrong, while an
expert sees the beginning of a slow death. The
phylloxera in the vineyards is nothing but a root-
disease, and it has been found that there is no
radical cure bi;t by taking out the old roots and
providing new ones. The old sort of grape is
grafted on an American root, and in course of
5

6 Preface

time you have the same stem and branches and
fruit as before; But the Eoots are New and
able to resist the disease. It is in the part of the
plant that is Hid from Sight, that the disease
comes, and where healing must be sought.

How the Church of Christ, and the spiritual life
of thousands of its members, suffers from the root-
disease ; the neglect of secret intercourse with God.
It is the lack of secret prayer, the neglect of the
maintenance of that hidden life "Booted in
Christ," "Eooted and grounded in love," that
explains the feebleness of the Christian life to
resist the world, and its failure to bring forth
fruit abundantly. Nothing can change this but
the restoration, in the life of the believer, of the
inner chamber to the place which Christ meant it
to have. As Christians learn, instead of trusting
their own efforts, what it is daily to strike their
roots deeper into Christ, and to make the secret
personal fellowship with God their chief care, true
godliness will flourish. "If the root be holy, so
are the branches." If the morning hour be holy
to the Lord, the day with its duties will be so too.
If the root be healthy, so are the branches.

The most of these chapters have already ap-
peared in The South African Pioneer; it is at the
request of some who read them that I have con-
sented to these now being republished. I pray that
God may bless them to some of His children in
the pursuit of the deeper and more fruitful life,
the life hid with Christ in God.

Andrew Murray.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. The Morning Hour

II. The Door Shut— Alone with God .

III. The Open Door— The Open Reward

IV. Moses and the Word of God

V. Moses, the Man of Prayer

VI. Moses, the Man of God

VII. The Power of God's Word

VIII. The Seed Is the Word

IX. Doing and Knowing .

X. The Blessedness of the Doer

XI. Keeping Christ's Commandments

XII. Life and Knowledge .

XIII. The Heart and the Understanding

XIV. God's Thoughts and our Thoughts

XV. Meditation

XVI. Revealed unto Babes

XVII. Learning of Christ

TABK
9

15

19
133
27
32
3T
41
45
51
66
61
64
69
72
. 77
, 82

Contents

CHAPTKK

XVIII.

Teachableness . . . .

PACK

86

XIX.

The Life and the Light .

91

XX.

The Bible Student . . . ,

96

XXI.

Who art Thou?

101

XXII.

The WiU of God .

105

XXIII.

Feeding on the Word

109

XXIV.

Holidays

113

XXV.

The Inward and the Outward

. iir

XXVI.

The Daily Renewal— Its Power .

. 121

XXVII.

The DaUy Renewal— The Pattern

. 125

XXVIII.

The Daily Renewal— Its Cost

. 129

XXIX.

HoUness— The Chief Aim of Bible Studj

T 133

XXX.

Psalm cxix. and Its Teaching

. 138

XXXI.

The Holy Trinity .

. 142

XXXII.

In Christ ....

. 147

XXXIII.

Himself Alone

. 151

XXXIV.

Soul- Winning

. 156

XXXV.

The Power of Intercession

. 161

XXXVI.

The Intercessor • • •

. 166

THE INNER CHAMBER

THE MORNING HOUE

" My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord ;
in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee,
and will look up." — Ps. v. 3.

" The Lord God wakeneth morning by morning, He
wakeneth mine ear to hear as they that are taught." —
Is. 1. 4.

From the earliest ages God's servants have thought
of the morning as the time specially fitted for the
worship of God. It is still regarded by all Chris-
tians both as a duty and a privilege to devote some
portion of the beginning of the day to seeking
retirement and fellowship with God. Many
Christians, and specially the Student's Christian
Association, observe The Morning Watch; the
Y. P. C. E. Society speak of it as the Quiet Hour :
others use the name of the Still Hour or the Quiet
Time. All these, whether they think of a whole
hour or half an hour, or a quarter of an hour,
unite with the Psalmist in what he says, "My
voice shalt thou hear in the morning, 0 Lord."

In speaking of the extreme importance of this
daily time of quiet for prayer and meditation on
God's Word, Mr. Mott has said : —

lo The Inner Chamber

"Next to receiving Christ as Saviour, and
claiming the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, we know
of no act attended with larger good to ourselves
or others, than the formation of an undiscour-
ageable resolution to keep the morning watch, and
spend the first half hour of the day alone with
God." At first sight the statement appears too
strong. The act of receiving Christ as Saviour
is one of such infinite consequences for eternity,
the act of claiming the Holy Spirit is one that
works such a revolution in the Christian life, that
such a simple thing as the firm determination to
keep the morning watch hardly appears sufficiently
important to be placed next to them. If, however,
we think how impossible it is to live out our daily
life in Christ as our Saviour from sin, or to main-
tain a walk in the leading and power of the Holy
Spirit, without daily, close fellowship with God,
we soon shall see the truth of the sentiment. Be-
cause it simply means the fixed determination that
Christ shall have the whole life, that the Holy
Spirit shall in everything be fully obeyed. The
morning watch is the key to the position in which
the surrender to Christ and the Holy Spirit can
be unceasingly and fully maintained.

To realise this, let us look first at what ought
to be THE Object of the morning watch. The
morning watch must not be regarded as an end
in itself. It is not sufficient that it gives us a
blessed time for prayer and Bible study, and so
brings us a certain measure of refreshment and

Ihe Morning Hour n

help. It is to serve as a means to an end. And
that^nd is — ^to secure the presence of Christ for
the whole day. Personal devotion to a friend or
a pursuit means that that friend or pursuit shall
always hold their place in the heart, even when
other engagements occupy the attention. Personal
devotion to Jesus means that we allow nothing to
separate us from Him for a moment. To abide in
Him and His love, to be kept by Him and His grace,
to be doing His will and pleasing Him — this cannot
possibly be an intermittent thing to one who is
truly devoted to Him. " I need Thee every hour/'
"Moment by moment I am kept in His love.^' These
hymns are the language of life and truth. " In Thy
name shall they rejoice all the day/' " I the Lord
do keep it ; I will water it every moment '' — ^these
are words of Divine power. The believer cannot
stand for one moment without Christ. The per-
sonal devotion to Him refuses to be content with
anything less than to abide always in His love
and His will. Nothing less is the true scriptural
Christian life. And the importance and blessed-
ness and true aim of the morning watch can only
be seen as nothing less than this is its first object.
The clearer the object of our pursuit is, the
better we shall be able to adapt the means to its
attainment. Consider the morning watch now as
THE Means to this great end: I want to secure
absolutely the presence of Christ all the day, to
do nothing that can interfere with it. I feel at
once that my success for the day will depend upon

12 The Inner Chamber

the clearness and the strength of the faith that
seeks and finds and holds Him in the closet.
Meditation and prayer and the word will all be
used as subordinate and auxiliary to this : the link
for the day between Christ and me must be re-
newed and firmly fastened in the morning hour.
At first it may appear as if the thought of the
whole day, with all its possible cares, pleasures,
temptations, may disturb the rest I have enjoyed
in my quiet devotion. It is possible; but it will
be no loss. True religion aims at having the char-
acter of Christ so formed in us, that in our most
common acts His temper and disposition shall
shew themselves. The spirit and the will of Christ
are meant so to possess us that in our intercourse
with men, in our relaxation, in our business, it
shall be a second nature to us to act according to
them. All this can be, because Christ Himself,
as the Living One, lives in us. Be not disturbed
if at first the aim appears too high or difficult,
and occupies too much of your time in the hour
of private prayer. The time you give it will be
richly rewarded. You will return to prayer and
scripture with new purpose and new faith. As the
morning watch begins to have its effect on the
day, the day will re-act on its first half hour, arid
fellowship with Christ have a new meaning and
a new power.

It will specially have its influence on the
Spirit in which you keep the morning watch. As
the grandeur of the aim — ^unbroken fellowship

The Morning Hour 13

with God in Christ through the day — and the true
nature of the means to secure it — a definite con-
scious meeting with Christ and a securing His
presence for the day — possesses us, it will be seen
that the one essential thing is, whole-hearted pur-
pose: the fixed determination, whatever effort or
self-denial it may cost, to win the prize. In study
or on the sport field every student knows what
need there is of vigorous will and determined
purpose if we are to succeed. Eeligion needs, and
indeed deserves, not less but more of intense devo-
tion. If anything, surely the love of Christ needs
the whole heart. It is this fixed determination
before ever3i:hing to secure Christ's presence, that
will overcome every temptation to be unfaithful
or superficial in the keeping of our pledges. It is
this will make the morning watch itself a mighty
means of grace in strengthening character, and
nerving us to say No to every call for self-indul-
gence. It is this will enable us at once, when we
enter the inner chamber and shut the door, to be
there with our whole heart, ready at once for our
intercourse with Christ. And it is this determina-
tion that, from the morning watch on, wiU become
the keynote of our daily life.

In the world it is often said: Great things are
possible to any man who knows what he wills, and
wills it with all his heart. The student who has
made personal devotion to Christ his watchword,
will find in the morning hour the place where
day by day the insight into his holy calling is

14 The Inner Chamber

renewed; where his will is braced up to walk
worthy of it; and his faith rewarded by the pres-
ence of Christ waiting to meet him, and take
charge of him for the day. We are more than
conquerors through Him who loves us. A living
Christ waits to meet us.

n

THE DOOR SHUT — ALONE WITH GOD

" When thou prayest enter into thine inner chamber,
and, having shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which
seeth in secret." — Matt. vi. 6.

Man was created for fellowship with God. God
made him in His own image and likeness, that he
might be fit for this, capable of understanding
and enjoying God, entering into His will and
delighting in His glory. Because God is the
Everywhere-present and All-pervading One, he
could have lived in the enjoyment of an unbroken
fellowship amidst whatever work he had to do.

Ofjhis fellowship sin robbed us.

Nothing but this fellowship can satisfy the
heart of either man or God. It was this Christ
came to restore; to bring back to God His lost
creature, and bring back man to all he was created
for. Intercourse with God is the consummation
of all blessedness on earth as in heaven. It comes
when the promise, so often given, becomes a full
experience: I will be with thee, I will never leave
thee or forsake thee, and when we can say: The
Father is always with me.

This intercourse with God is meant to be ours
25

i6 The Inner Chamber

all the day, whatever be our condition or the cir-
cumstances that surround us. But its enjoyment
depends mpon the reality of the intercourse in the
inner chamber. The power of maintaining close
and glad fellowship with God all the day will
depend entirely upon the intensity with which we
seek to secure it in the hour of secret prayer. The
one essential thing in the Morning Watch or the
Quiet Hour is — Fellowship with God.

It is this our Lord teaches is to be the inner
secret of secret prayer : " Shut thy door, and pray
to thy Father which seeth in secret." The first
and chief thing is, see that there in secret you have
the Father's Presence and Attention. Know that
He sees and hears you. Of more importance than
all your requests, however urgent, of more im-
portance than all your earnestness and effort to
pray aright, is this one thing — ^the childlike, living
assurance that your Father sees you, that you
have now met Him, and that with His eye on
you and yours on Him, you are now enjoying
actual intercourse with Him.

Christian! there is a terrible danger to which
you stand exposed in your inner chamber. You
are in danger of substituting Prayer and Bible
Study for living fellowship with God, the living
interchange of giving Him your love, your heart,
and your life, and receiving from Him His love.
His life, and His spirit. Your needs and their
expression, your desire to pray humbly and ear-
nestly and believingly, may so occupy you, that

The Door Shut — Alone with God 17

the light of His countenance and the joy of His
love cannot enter you. Your Bible Study may so
interest you, and so waken pleasing religious sen-
timent, that — yes — the very Word of God may
become a substitute for God Himself, the Great-
est Hindrance to Fellowship Because it
Keeps the Soul Occupied Instead of Leading
IT TO God Himself. And we go out into the day's
work without, the power of an abiding fellowship,
because in our morning devotions the blessing
was not secured.

"WTiat a difference it would make in the life of
many, if everything in the closet were subordinate
to this one thing : I want through the day to walk
with God ; my morning hour is the time when my
Father enters into a definite engagement with me
and I with Him that it shall be so. What^strength
would be imparted by the consciousness: God has
taken charge of me, He is going with me Himself ;
I am going to do His will all day in His strength ;
I am ready for all that may come. Yes, what a
nobility would come into life, if secret prayer were
not only an asking for some new sense of comfort,
or light, or strength, but the Giving Away of
Life Just for One^JJay Into the Sure and
Safe Ejeeping of a Mighty and Faithful

GOD^

" Pray to thy Father which seeth in secret, and
thy Father which seeth in secret will reward thee
openly." Where the secret fellowship with the
Father in spirit and in truth is maintained, the

1 8 The Inner Chamber

public life before men will carry the reward. The
Father who sees in secret takes charge and rewards
openly. Separation from men, in solitude- with
God — ^this is the sure, the only way to live in inter-
course with men in the power of God^s blessing.

Ill

THE OPEN DOOR — THE OPEN REWARD

" When thou fastest anoint thine head, and wash thy
face that thou appear not unto men to fast, but to thy
Father which seeth in secret, and thy Father which
seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." — Matt.
vi. 17.

"When they saw the boldness of Peter and John
they took knowledge of them, that they had been with
Jesus." — Acts iv. 13.

" And it came to pass when Moses came down from
Mount Sinai, that he wist not that the skin of his face
shone while he talked with them. And when Aaron
and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the
skin of his face shone ; and they were afraid to come
nigh to him. And till Moses had done speaking with
them, he put a veil upon his face." — Exod. xxxiv.
29-33.

The transition from the fellowship with God in
the morning hour to the intercourse with our f el-
lowmen is often difficult. If we have met God,
we long to maintain the sense of His presence,
and our surrender to Him. We go out to the
breakfast table, where, perhaps in the bosom of
our own family, the atmosphere is all at once
changed, and as the presence of men and the
visible asserts itself, we begin to lose what we had
19

20 The Inner Chamber

found. Many a 3^oiing Christian has been per-
plexed with the question how to keep his heart
filled with that of which he does not feel at liberty,
or has not the opportunity, to speak. Even in
religious circles it is not always easy to have free
intercourse, through lack of fervour or boldness,
on that which would give the greatest profit and
pleasure. Let us strive to learn how our inter-
course with men, may be, instead of a hindrance,
a help to the maintenance of a life of continual
fellowship with God.

The lessons which the story of Moses with the
veil on his face teach, are very suggestive. Close
and continued fellowship with God will in due
time leave its mark and make itself manifest
before men. Moses wist not that his face shone:
the light of God shining from us will be uncon-
scious; it will but deepen the sense of our being
an earthen vessel (1 Cor. ii. 3, 4, and 2 Cor. iv.).
The sense of God^s presence in a man may often
cause others to fear, or at least to feel ill at ease in,
his company. When others observe what is to be
seen in him, the true believer will know what it is
to veil his face, and prove by humility and love
that he is indeed a man of like passions with those
around him. And yet, through all, there will be
the proof, too, that he is a man of God, who lives
in, and has dealings with, an unseen world.

The same lessons are taught by what our Lord
says about fasting. Make no show of thy fasting,
so that thou appear not unto men to fast; meet

The Open Door— The Open Reward 21

them in the joy and kindness of God's gentleness,
as the Father's beloved and loving child. Count
UPON God, Who Has Seen Thee in Secret, to
Eewaed Thee Openly, to Give Thee Grace in
Intercourse with Him, and to Make Them
Know That His Grace and Light Are on
Thee.

The story of Peter and John confirms the same
truth: they had been with Jesus not only while
He was on earth, but as He entered into the heav-
enlies, and had received His spirit. They simply
acted out what the spirit of Christ taught them;
even enemies could see by their boldness that they
had been with Jesus.

The blessing of intercourse with God may easily
be lost by entering too deeply into intercourse
with men. The spirit of the inner chamber must
be carried out into a holy watchfulness throughout
the day. We know not at what hour the enemy
may come. This continuance of the morning
watch may be maintained by a quiet self-restraint,
in not giving the reins to nature. It has, in a
religious home circle, often sought help, in each
one repeating a text at the breakfast table on some
fixed subject, giving easy occasion to religious
conversation. When once the abiding sense of
God's presence and of intercourse with Him — " be
thou in the fear of God all the day long "—has
become the aim of the morning hour, with the
deepest humility and the most loving intercourse
with those around us, grace will be sought and

22 The Inner Chamber

found to pass on into the day's duties with the
continuity of fellowship kept unbroken. It is a
great thing to enter the inner chamber, and shut
to the door, and meet the Father in secret. It is
a greater thing to open the door again, and go out,
in an enjoyment of that Presence which nothing
can disturb.

To some, such a life does not appear needful;
the strain is too great ; one can be a good Christian
without it. To those who seek to be men of one
thing, who feel that if they are to be true and
mighty to influence the church and the world
around them they must be full of God and His
Presence, everything will be subordinate to the one
question: How to bear in the earthen vessel the
heavenly treasure, the power of Christ resting on
us all the day.

MOSES AND THE WORD OF GOD

In regard to the connection between prayer and
the word in our private devotion, the expression
of a convert from heathenism has often been
quoted: I pray, I speak to God; I read in the
Bible, God speaks to me. There is a verse in the
history of Moses, in which this thought is beau-
tifully brought out. We read, Numbers vii, 89,
"When Moses Was Gone into the Taber-
nacle TO Speak with God, then He Heard the
Voice or One Speaking to Him from off the
Mercy Seat : and God Spake unto Him.'' When
he went in to pray for himself or his people, and
to wait for instructions, he found One waiting for
him. What a lesson for our morning watch, JL.
prayerful spirit is the spirit to which, God. will
speak. A prayerful spirit will be a listening spirit
waiting to hear what God says. In the inter-
course with God His presence and the part He
takes must be as real as my own. We want to
ask what is needed that our Scripture reading
and praying may be such true fellowship with
God.

First, Get into the Eight Place. *^ Moses
went into the tabernacle to speak with God.'' He
23

24 The Inner Chamber

separated himself from the people, and went where
he could be with God alone. He^went to the pla^e
where God was to be found. Jesjis. has .told us
where that place is. He calls us to enter into our
closet, and shut the door, and pray to our Father
which seeth in secret. Anywhere where we really
are Alone with God may be to us the secret of
His presence. To speak with God needs separa-
tion from all else. It needs a heart intently set
upon and in full expectation of meeting God per-
sonally, and having direct dealings with Him.
Those who go there to speak to God, will hear the
Voice of One speaking to them.

!^ext. Get into the Eight Position. He
heard the Voice of One speaking from off the
mercy seat. Bow before the mercy seat. "There
the consciousness of your unworthiness wiU not
hinder you, but be a real help in trusting God.
There you may have the assured confidence that
your upward look will be met by His eye, that your
prayer can be heard, that His loving answer will
be given. Bow before the mercy seat, and be
sure that the God of Mercy will see and bless
you.

And then. Get into the Right Disposition —
the listening attitude. Many are so occupied with
the much or the little they have to say in their
prayers, that the Voice of One speaking off the
mercy seat is never heard, because it is not ex-
pected or waited for. " Thus saith the Lord, The
heaven is My throne, and the earth is My foot-

Moses and the Word of God 25

stool; to this man will I look, even to him that is
Poor and of a Coxtrite Spirit, and Trem-
BLETH AT My Word." Let US enter the closet, and
set ourselves to pray, with a heart that humbly
waits to hear God speak; in the Word we read-;
we shall indeed hear the Voice of One speaking
to us. The highest blessedness of prayer will be
our ceasing to pray, to let God speak.

Prayer and the Word are inseparably linked to-
gether: power in the use of either depends upon
the presence of the other. The Word gives me
matter for prayer, telling me what God will do
for me. It shows me the path of prayer, telling
me how God would have me come. It gives me
the power for praj^er, the courage of the assurance
I will be heard. And it brings me the answer
to prayer, as it teaches what God will do for me.
And so, on the other hand, prayer prepares the ,
heart for receiving the Word from God Himself,
for the teaching of the Spirit to give the spiritual
understanding of it, for the faith that is made
partaker of its mighty working.

It is clear why this is so. Prayer and the Word
have one common centre — God. Prayer seeks
God : the Word reveals God. In prayer man askg
God: in the Word God answers man. In prayer*
man rises to heaven to dwell with God: in the
Word God comes to dwell with man. In prayer
man gives himself to God: in the Word God
gives Himself to man.

In prayer and the Word it must be all — God.

26 The Inner Chamber

Make God the all of thy heart, the one object of
thy desire; prayer and the Word will be a blessed
fellowship with God, the interchange of thought,
and love and life : a dwelling in God and God in
us. Seek God and live!

iV]

MOSES, THE MAN OP PRAYER

Before Moses was the patriarchal dispensation,
with the family life, and the power the fathers
had, marking it. Moses is the first man appointed
to be a teacher and leader of men. In him we
find wonderful illustrations of the place and
power of intercession in the servant of God.

Moses' Prayers. — In Egypt, from his first call,
Moses prayed. He asked God what he was to say
to the people, Exod. iii. 11-13. He told Him all
his weakness, and besought Him to be relieved of
his mission, iv. 1-13. When the people reproached
him that their burdens were increased, he went
and told God, v. 22, and he made known to Him
all his fears, vi. 12. This was his first training.
Out of this was born his power in prayer when,
time after time, Pharaoh asked him to entreat the
Lord for him, and deliverance came at Moses' re-
quest (viii. 8, 9, 12, 28, 29, 30, 31; ix. 28, 29, 33;
X. IT, 18). Study these passages until you come
under the fuU impression of how real a factor in
Moses' work and God's redemption prayer was.

At the Eed Sea, Moses cried to God with the
people and the answer came (xiv. 15). In the
wilderness when the people thirsted, and when

27

28 The Inner Chamber

Amalek attacked them, it was also prayer that
brought deliverance (xvii. 4, 11).

At Sinai, when Israel had made the Golden
Calf, it was prayer that at once averted the threat-
ened destruction, xxxii. 11, 14. It was renewed
prayer that gained them restoration, xxxii. 31. It
was more prayer that secured God's presence to
go with them (xxxiii. 17), and once again it was
prayer that brought the revelation of God's glory
(xxxiii. 19). And when that had been given it
was fresh prayer that received the renewal of the
covenant, xxxiv. 9, 10.

In Deuteronomy we have a wonderful summary
of all this, ix. 18, 19, 20, 26; we see with what
intensity he prayed, and how in one case it was for
forty days and forty nights that he fell on his
face before the Lord, ix. 25; x. 10.

In Numbers we read of Moses' prayer quench-
ing the fire of the Lord, xi. 2, and obtaining the
supply of meat; xi. 2, 11, of prayer healing
Miriam, xii. 13 ; of prayer again saving the nation
when they had refused to go up to the land, xiv. 17-
20. Prayer brought down judgment on Korah, xvi.
15, and when God would consume the whole con-
gregation, prayer made atonement, 46. Prayer
brought water out of the rock, xx. 6, and in
answer to prayer the brazen serpent was given,
xxi. 7. To prayer God's will was made known in
a case of difficulty, xxvii. 5, and Joshua given as
Moses' successor, 16.

Study all this until your whole heart is fiUed

Moses, the Man of Prayer 29

with the thought of the part prayer must play,
may play, in the life of a man who would be God's
servant to his fellowmen.

As we study, the parts will unite into a living
whole and Moses will be to us a living model for
our prayer life. ^Ye shall learn what is needed to
be an intercessor. The lessons that will come to
us will be such as these : —

I see Moses was a man given up to God, zealous,
yea, jealous for God, for His honour and will.

A man, too, absolutely given up to his people,
ready to sacrifice himself, if they may be saved.

A man conscious of a Divine calling to act as
mediator, to be the link, the channel of com-
munication and of blessing, between a God in
heaven and men on earth. A life so entirely pos-
sessed by this mediatorial consciousness that
nothing can be more simple and natural than to
expect that God will hear.

I see here God in answer to the prayers of one .
man saves and blesses those He has entrusted to ^
him, and does what He would not do without it.
I see how the whole government of God has taken
up prayer into its plan as one of its constituent
parts. I see how heaven is filled with the life ^.-1 "
and power and blessing earth needs, and how the ;:./ =^^4..
prayer of earth is the power to bring that blessing , , ^ .^J,
down.

I see above all how prayer is an index of the
spiritual life, and how its power depends upon my
relation to God, and the consciousness of being

30 The Inner Chamber

His representative. He entrusts His work to me,
and the more simple and entire my devotion to
His interests are, the more natural and certain
becomes the assurance that He hears me.

Think of the place God had in Moses' life, as
the God who had sent him, the God to whom he
was wholly devoted, the God who had promised
to be with him, and who would and did always
help him when and as he prayed.

Now for the practical application : How to learn
to pray like Moses? We cannot secure this grace
by an act of the will. Our first lesson must be,
the sense of impotence. Then grace will work it
in us, slowly and surely, if we give ourselves into
its training. But though the training will be
gradual, there is one thing can be done at once,
we can at once decide to give ourselves to this
life and take up the right position. Do this now,
take the decision, to Live Entirely to Be a
Channel for God's Blessing to Flow through
You TO THE World. Take the Step. If need
be, take ten minutes for deliberate thought. Ac-
cept the Divine appointment, and take up some
object of intercession.

Take time, say a week, and get firm hold of the
elementary truths Moses' example teaches. As a
music teacher insists upon practising the scales —
only practice makes perfect — set yourself to learn
thoroughly and to apply the needed first lessons.

God seeks men through whom He can bless the
world. Say definitely. Here am I : I will give my

Moses, the Man of Prayer 31

life to this. Cultivate large faith in the simple
truth : God hears prayer ; God will do what I ask.
Give yourself as wholly to men as to God, and
set your eyes open to a sense of the need of a
perishing world. Take up your position in Christ,
and in the power which His Name, and Life and
Spirit give you. And go on practising definite
intercession.

VI

MOSES, THE MAN OF GOD

"Moses, the man of God, blessed the children of
Israel." — D"eut. xxxiii. 1

The man of God! How much the name means!
A man who comes from God, chosen and sent of
Him. A man who walks with God, lives in His
fellowship and carries the mark of His presence.
A man who lives for God and His will; whose
whole being is pervaded and ruled by the glory
of God; who involuntarily and unceasingly leads
men to think of God. A man in whose heart and
life God has taken the right place as the All in
All, and who has only one desire, that He should
have that place throughout the world.

Such men of God are what the world needs;
such are what God seeks, that He may fill them
with Himself, and send them into the world to
help others to know Him. Such a man JMoses
was so distinctly that men naturally spoke of him
thus — Moses, the man of God ! Such a man every
servant of God ought to aim at being — a living
witness and proof of what God is to him in heaven,
and is to him on earth, and what He claims to
be in all.

In a previous chapter we spoke of Intercourse
with God as what man had been created for, as
32

Moses, the Man of God 33

the privilege of daily life, as what was to be our
first care in the morning watch. What was there
said had chiefly reference to our personal need,
and the power of a godly happy life influencing
others. The name, Moses, the man of God! and
the thought of a man being so closely and mani-
festly linked to God that men as by instinct gave
this as his chief characteristic — the man of God!
— ^leads us farther. It brings us out into public
life, it suggests the idea of the impression we
make upon men, and the power we can have of
so carrying the sign of God^s holy presence with
us that when men see us or think of us, the name
shall at once suggest itself — The Man of God.

These are the men the world and God equally
need^ And why? Because the world, by sin, has
fallen away from God. Because in Christ the
world has been redeemed for God. And because
God has no way of showing men what they ought
to be, of awakening and calling and helping them,
but through men of God, in whom His life. His
spirit. His power are working. Man was created
for God, that God might live and dwell and work
and show forth His glory in him and through him.
God was to be his all in all. The indwelling of
God was to be as natural and delightful as it is
true, strange and incomprehensible. When the
redemption of Christ was completed in the de-
scent of God the Holy Spirit into the hearts of
men, this indwelling was restored, God regained
possession of His home. And where a man Gives

34 The Inner Chamber

Himself up Wholly to the Presence of the
Holy Spirit, not only as a power working in him,
but AS God Dwelling in Him (John xiv. 16, 20,
23; 1 John iv.) he may become, in the deepest
meaning of the word, A Man of God !

Paul tells us that it is through the power of
/Holy Scripture that "the man of God is com-
plete." This suggests that with some the life is
imperfect, and needs to be made perfect. " Every
scripture is inspired of God, and is profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruc-
tion in righteousness, that the Man of God May
BE Complete, furnished completely to every good
work." This brings us again to the morning
watch as the chief time for personal Bible study.
It is as we yield heart and life to the Word, for
God through its teaching, its reproof, its correc-
tion, its instruction to search and form our whole
life, and be thus come under the direct operation
of God, and into full intercourse with Him, that
the Man of God Will be Complete — furnished
to every good work.

Oh ! for grace to be truly a man of God ! A
man that knows and proves these three things;
God is all ; God claims all ; God works all. A man
that has seen the place God has in His universe
and in men — He is the All in All! A man
who has understood that God Asks and Must
Have All, and who only lives to give God His
due and His glory ! A man who has discovered the
great secret that God Works All, and seeks, like

Moses, the Man of God 35

the Son of God, to live in the unceasing blessed
dependence that the Father in Him speaks the
words and does the work.

Brother! seek to be a man of God! Let God
in the morning watch be all to thee. Let God
during the day be all to thee. And let thy life be
devoted to one thing, to bring men to God, and
God to men, so that in His Church, and in the
world, God may have the place due to Him.

" If I be a man of God, let fire come down from
heaven." Thus answered Elijah when the captain
called him to come down. The true God is the
God who answers by fire. And the true man of
God is he who knows how to call down the fire,
because he has power with the God of heaven.
Whether the fire be that of judgment or the Holy
Spirit, the work of the man of God is to bring
fire down to earth. "VHiat the world needs is the
man of God who knows God's power, and his power
with God.

Do believe that it is in the secret prayer habit,
of daily life that we learn to know our God, and
His fire, and our power with Him. Oh ! to know
what it is to be a man of God, and what it implies.

In Elijah as in Moses we see how it just means
a separation from every other interest, an entire
identification with the honour of God, no longer
a man of the world, but a Max of God.

There is a secret feeling that aU this brings
more strain and sacrifice, difficulty and danger,
than we are ready for. This is only true as long

'\'a

36 The Inner Chamber

as we have not seen how absolute God's claim is,
how unutterably blessed it is to yield to it, and
how certain that God Himself will work it in us.
Turn back now and look at'^Moses, the man^f
prayer, 'Moses, the man of the word, and see how ^^
out of these three grew — Moses, the man of God.
' •'■'^See the same in the life of Elijah — the harmony
between our hearing God's word and His hearing
ours, and the way in which it becomes Divinely
possible to be and live — A Man of God. And
study then the application.

YII

THE POWER OF GOD's WORD

"The word of God which worketh in you that be-
lieve."— 1 Thess. ii. 12.

The value of the words of a man depends upon
my knowledge of him who speaks. What a differ-
ence when a man gives me the promise, I will
give you the half of all I have, whether the speaker
be a poor man who owns a shilling, or a million-
aire who offers to share his fortune with me. One
of the first requisites to fruitful Bible study is the
knowledge of God as the Omnipotent One, and
of the power of His word.

The power of God's word is infinite. " By the
word of the Lord were the heavens made. He
spake and it was done; He commanded and it
stood fast.'' In the word of God His omnipotence
works: it has creative power and calls into exis-
tence THE Very Thing op Which It Speaks.

As the word of the Living God it is a living
word, and gives life. It can not only call into
existence, but even make alive again that which is
dead. Its quickening power can raise dead bodies,
can give eternal life to dead souls. All spiritual
life comes through it, for we are born of incor-
ruptible seed by the word of God that liveth and
abideth for ever.

37

38 The Inner Chamber

Here there lies, hidden from many, one of the
deepest secrets of the blessing of God's word — the
faith in its creative and quickening energy. The
Word Will Work in Me the Very Disposition
OR Grace Which it Commands or Promises.
^'It worketh effectually in them that believe."
Nothing can resist its power when received into
the heart through the Holy Spirit " It worketh
effectually in them that believe." " The voice of
the Lord is in power." Everything depends upon
learning the art of receiving that word into the
heart. And in learning this art the first step is —
Faith in Its Living, Its Omnipotent, Its
Creative Power. By His word " God calleth the
things that are not, as though they were."

As true as this is of all God's mighty deeds from
creation on to the resurrection of the dead, it is
true too of every word spoken to us in His holy
book. Two things keep us from believing this as
we should. The one is the terrible experience in
all around, and perhaps in ourselves too, of the
word being made of none effect by human wisdom
or unbelief or worldliness. The other the neglect
of the teaching of Scripture that the word is a
seed. Seeds are small, seeds may be long dormant,
seeds have to be hidden, and when they sprout are
of slow growth. Because the action of God's word
is hidden and unobserved, slow and apparently
feeble, we do not believe in its omnipotence. Let
us make it one of our first lessons. The word I
study is the power of God unto salvation; It

The Power of God's Word 39

Will Work in Me in All I Need, All the
Father Asks.

What a prospect this faith would open up for
our spiritual life ! We should see all the treasures
and blessings of God's grace to be within our
reach. The word has power to enlighten our dark-
ness : in our hearts it will bring the light of God,
the sense of His love, and the knowledge of His
will. The word can fill us with strength and cour-
age to conquer every enemy, and to do whatever
God asks us to do. The word would cleanse, and
sanctify, would work in us faith and obedience,
would become in us the seed of every trait in the
likeness of our Lord. Through the word the
Spirit would lead us into all truth, that is, make
all that is in the word true in us, and so prepare
our heart to be the habitation of the Father and
the Son.

What a change would come over our relation to
God's word and to the Morning watch if we really
believed this simple truth. Let us begin our
training for that ministry of the word which every
believer must exercise, by proving its power in our
own experience. Let us begin to seek this, quietly
setting ourselves to learn the great faith-lesson, the
mighty power of God's word. Nothing less than
this is meant by saying: the Word of God Is
True! because God himself will make it true in
us. We shall have much to learn in regard to
what hinders that power, much to overcome to be
freed from these hindrances, much to surrender to

40 The Inner Chamber

receive that working. But all will come right if
we will only set out upon our Bible study with the
determined resolve to believe that God's Word
Has Omnipotent Power in the Heart to
Work Every Blessing oe Which It Speaks.

VIII

THE SEED IS THE WORD

I THINK it may be confidently said that in all
nature there is no other illustration of what the
Word of God is, so true, so full of meaning, as
that of the seed. To have a full spiritual insight
into it is a wonderful means of grace.

The points of resemblance are easily stated.
There is the apparent insignificance of the seed —
a little thing as compared with the tree that
springs from it. There is the life, enclosed and
dormant within a husk. There is the need of a
suitable soil, without which growth is impossible.
There is the slow growth with its length of time
calling for the long patience of the husbandman.
And there is the fruit, in which the seed repro-
duces and multiplies itself. In all these respects,
the seed teaches us most precious lessons as to our
use of God's Word.

There is first the Lesson op Faith. Faith
does not look at appearances. As far as we can
judge, it looks most improbable that a Word of
God should give life in the soul, should work in
us the very grace of which it speaks, should trans-
form our whole character, should fill us with
strength. And yet so it is. When once we have
learned to believe that the Word can work effectu-

42 The Inner Chamber

ally the very truth of which it is the expression;
we have found one of the chief secrets of our
Bible Study. We shall then receive each
word as the pledge and the power of a Divine
working.

Then there is tpie Lesson- of Labour. The
seed needs to be gathered, and kept, and put into
the prepared soil. And so the mind has to gather
from scripture and understand and pass on to
the heart, as the only soil on which this heavenly
seed can grow, the words which meet our need.
We cannot give the life or the growth. Nor do
we need to : it is there. But what we can do is to
hide the Word in our heart, and keep it there,
waiting for the sunshine that comes from
above.

And the seed teaches the Lesson of Patience.
The effect of the Word on the heart is in most
cases not immediate. It needs time to strike root,
and grow up: Christ's words must abide in us.
We must not only day by day increase our store
of Bible knowledge — this is only like gathering
the grain in a barn — ^but watch over those words
of command or promise that we have specially
taken, and allow them room in our heart to spread
both root and branches. We need to know what
seed we have put in, and to cultivate a watchful
but patient expectancy. In due time we shall reap,
if we faint not.

And last comes the Lesson of Fruitfulness.
However insignificant that little seed of a Word

The Seed is the Word 43

of God appears, however feeble its life may seem,
however deep hidden the very thought of what it
speaks may be, and however trying the slowness of
its growth may be to our patience — be sure the fruit
will come. The very truth and life and power of
God, of which the Word contained the thought,
will grow and ripen within you. And just as a
seed bears a fruit, containing the same seed for
new reproduction, so the Word will not only bring
you the fruit it promised, but that fruit will each
time become a seed which you carry to others to
give life and blessing.

Not only the Word, but "the kingdom of
heaven is like a seed." And all the grace of it
comes in no other way than as a hidden seed in
the heart of the regenerate. Christ is a seed.
The Holy Spirit is a seed. The love of God shed
abroad in the heart is a seed. The exceeding
greatness of the power that worketh in us is a
seed. The hidden life is there in the heart, but
not at once or always felt in its power. The
Divine glory is there, but often without form or
comeliness, to be known only by faith, to be
counted and acted on even when not felt, to be
waited for in its springing forth and its growth.

As this central truth each time is firmly grasped
and held as the law of all the heavenly life on
earth, the study of God^s word becomes an act of
faith and surrender and dependence upon the
living God. I believe humbly, almost tremblingly,
in the Divine seed that there is in the Word, and

44 The Inner Chamber

the power of God's Spirit to make it true in my
life and experience. I yield my heart hungrily
and wholly to receive this Divine seed. And I
wait on God in absolute dependence and confidence
to give the increase in a power above what we can
ask or think.

IX

DOING AND KNOWING

" But Jesus said, * Yea rather, blessed are they that
hear the word of God, and keep it.' " — Luke ii. 28.

" If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know.^*
— John vii. 17.

Some time ago I received a letter from one who
was evidently an earnest Christian, asking me for
some hints to help him in Bible study. My first
thought was to answer that there are so many ad-
dresses and booklets on the subject, that he would
find all I could say, better said already. After a
little while, certain experiences in my own imme-
diate circle made me feel how needful instruction
was on this all-important subject, and I found
there were points to which it appeared desirable
that special prominence should be given. I take
up my pen with the earnest prayer and hope that
what I write may be from God, the fountain of
Light and Life, to help His young children to
see how they may draw from His precious Word
all that Divine instruction and nourishment, all
that abundant joy and strength which He has
there laid up for them.

I suppose myself addressing a young Christian
who has said to me, — Help me to study my Bible.
45

46 The Inner Chamber

Give me some rules to guide me as to how to
begin, and how to go on, so that I may know my
Bible well. The very first thing I have to. say to
him, the thing that comes before all else, is this : —
In your Bible study everything will depend upon
the spirit in which you come to it, upon the Object
or End you propose to yourself. In worldly
things a man is ruled and urged on by the End
or Aim he sets before himself. It is not otherwise
with the Bible. If your aim be simply to know
the Bible well, you will be disappointed. If you
think that the thorough knowledge of the Bible
will necessarily be a blessing, you are mistaken.
To some it is a curse. To others it is powerless,
it does not make them either holy or happy. To
some it is a burden, it depresses them instead of
quickening them or lifting them up.

And what ought then to be the Aim or End,
the real disposition of the Bible student? God's
word is food, bread from heaven; the first need
for Bible study is: — ^A Great Hunger After
EiGHTEOusxESS, — a great desire to Do All God's
Will. The Bible is a light: the first condition
to its enjoyment is — a Hearty Longing to Walk
IN God's Ways. Is not this what the texts I have
placed above teach us? "Blessed are they that
hear the word of God and Keep It'' There is
no blessedness in hearing or knowing God's word
apart from Ejeeping It. The word is nothing if
it be not kept, obeyed, done. "If any man
willeth TO Do His Will, he shall Know." Ac-

Doing and Knowing 47

cording to this saying of our Lord, all true knowl-
edge of God^s word depends upon there being first
THE Will to Do It. Is not this the very lesson
we are enforcing. God will refuse to unlock the
real meaning and blessing of His word to any
but those Whose Will Is Definitely Set Upon-
Doing It. I must read my Bible with one pur-
pose— " Whatsoever He saith unto you, Do It.^'

Why this should be so, is easily ascertained
when we think of what Words are meant for.
They stand between the will and the deed. A
man wills to do something for you; before he
does it, he expresses his thought or purpose in
words; then he fulfils the words by doing what
he has promised. Even so with God. His words
have their value from what He does. In creation
His word was with power: He spake and it was
done. In grace He does what He says. David
prays (2 Samuel vii. 25) "Do as Thou hast
Spoken." Solomon says at the consecration of
the temple — "Who hath with His hand Ful-
filled that which He Spake with His Mouth";
"who hath Performed His word that He
Spake"; "who hast Kjept that which Thou
didst Promise; "who Spake It with Thy
mouth, and hast fulfilled with Thy hand"; "let
Thy word be verified, which Thou hast spoken."
(2 Chron. vi. 4, 10, 15, 16.) In the prophets,
God says, "I the Lord have spoken it; I Will
Do It.'' And they say, " What Thou hast spoken,
Is Done.'' The truth and the worth of what God

48 The Inner Chamber

promises consists in this, that He Does It. His
word of promise is meant to be done.

This is no less true of His word of command,
of things which He meant IJs to Do. If we do
not do them, if we seek to know them, if we admire
their beauty and praise their wisdom, but do not
Do Them, we delude ourselves. They are meant
To Be Done; it is only as we do them that their
real meaning and blessing can be unfolded to us.
It is only as we do them, that we really can grow
in the Divine life. "Walk worthy of the Lord
unto all pleasing, bearing fruit unto Every Good
Work (this first, then) and increasing in the
Knowledge of God.^^ It is only when we ap-
proach God's words with the same object which
God had in view That They Should Be Done,
that we can have any hope of blessing.

Is this not what we see all around us in the
pursuit of knowledge, or in any branch of trade?
The apprentice or pupil is expected to put the
lessons he receives into practice; only then is he
prepared for further teaching. And even so in
the Christian life, Bible study is mere theory, a
pleasing exercise of mind and imagination, worth
little or nothing for a life of true holiness or
Christlikeness, until the student be ready never to
open or close his Bible without making God's
purpose His very own, and hearkening when He
says — " Do All that I Speak."

This was the mark of the saints of old. "So
Abram went, as the Lord had spoken to him.'*

Doing and Knowing 49

" As the Lord had commanded Moses, so did he/'
is the description of the man who as a servant was
faithful in all his house. And of David we
read: — "I have found a man after mine own
heart, who shall do all my will/' In Psalm cxix.
we hear him speaking with God about His word,
and praying for Divine light and teaching, but
ever accompanied by the vow of obedience, or
some other expression of love and delight. It is
the doing of God's will, that even with God's
own Son, is the one secret of entrance into the
favour and the mind of God.

I have just been reading Mr. Moody's new
book, " Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study." I
doubt not but many will avail themselves of the
suggestions it contains. They will think rightly,
what has helped a man like Mr. Moody, can help
me too. And yet they may be disappointed. They
must be, unless they bring to the Bible what- Mr.
Moody brought : an" Honest Desire to Do What-
ever He Saw God Wanted Him to Do. Young
Christian! I beseech you by the mercies of God,
when you ask God to lead you into the treasures
of His word, into the palace where Christ dwells,
do it as one who presents himself a living sacrifice,
Eeady to Do Whatever God Shall Speak. Do
not think this a matter of course. It is of deeper
importance than you know. This is more fre-
quently absent from Bible study than you think.
Seek for it with deep humility. The first need
for enjoying your food is hunger. The first re-

50 The Inner Chamber

quirement for the Bible study is A Simple, De-
termined Longing to Find out What God
Wants You to Do, and a Dead-in-earnest
Kesolve to Do It. " If any man willeth to Do
His Will, he shall know of the teaching"— to
him the word of God will be opened up.

X

THE BLESSEDNESS OF THE DOEE

*' Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only,
deluding your own selves. But . . . being not a
hearer that forgetteth, but a doer that worketh, this
man shall be blessed in his doing." — James i. 22-25.

What a terrible delusion to be content with, to
delight in hearing the word, and yet not to do it.
And how terriblj jcommon, the sight of multi-
tudes of Christians listening to the word of God
most regularly and earnestly, and yet not doing
it. If their own_^servant were to do so, hearing
but Not Doixg^ how summary the judgment
would be. And yet, so complete is the delusion,
they never know that they are not living good
Christian lives. .What can it be that thus deludes
us?

There is more than one thing. One is that
people mistake the pleasure they have in hearing,
for religion and worship. The mind delights in
having the truth put clearly before it; the imagi-
nation is gratified by its illustration; the feelings
are stirred by its application. To an active mind
knowledge gives pleasure. A man may study
some branch of science — say electricity — for the
enjoyment the knowledge gives him, without the
least intention of applying it practically. And
51

52 The Inner Chamber

so people go to church, and enjoy the preaching,
AND Yet do not Do What God Asks. The
unconverted and the converted man alike remain
content to go on in doing and confessing, and
still doing the things which they ought not to do.

Another cause of this delusion is the terrible
perversion of the doctrine of our impotence to
good. The grace of Christ to enable us to obey,
to keep from sinning and really to make us holy,
is so little believed, that men practically think
that there is a necessity of siiming on them. God
cannot expect an exact obedience of them, for
He knows they cannot render it. This error cuts
away the very root of a determined purpose to do
all God has said. It closes the heart to any
earnest desire to believe and experience all God's
grace can do in us, and keeps men self-contented
in the midst of sin. Hearing and not doing —
what terrible self-delusion.

There is a third reason for it, having special
reference to private Bible reading. The hearing
or reading is regarded as a duty, the performance
of which is considered to be a religious service.
We have spent our five or ten minutes in the
morning reading; we have read thoughtfully and
attentively; we have tried to take in what was
read: a duty faithfully performed eases the con-
science, and gives a sense of satisfaction. And
there is hardly any conception of the worthless-
ness, and more than that, of the hardening in-
fluence of a duty performed or of knowledge

The Blessedness of the Doer 53

acquired, unless we go out with our whole heart
set upon Literally Doing and Being What
God's Word Says He Would Have Us and Can
Make Us. Terrible delusion! ^^Be ye doers of
the word, and not hearers only, deluding your
own selves."

It is in the closet, in the morning watch, that
this delusion must be fought and conquered. We
may find that it will disturb our regular Bible
reading, and make us fall behind in our portions.
It need not do this. But far better it should,
than that this point remain doubtful and un-
settled. Everything Depends on this. Our
Lord Jesus said : " If any man willeth to Do His
Will, he shall Know of the Teaching whether
it be of God." It is oooly the heart that delights
in God's law, and Has Set Its Will Determin-
edly on Doing It^ that can receive the divine
illumination, which spiritually knows the teach-
ing of Christ in its Divine origin and power.
Without this will to do, our knowledge will not
profit : it is mere head knowledge.

In life, in science and art, in business, the only
way of truly knowing, is doing. What a man can-
not do he does not thoroughly know. The Only
Way to Know God, to Taste His Blessed-
ness^ Is Through the Doing of His Will. That
proves whether it is a God of my own sentiment
and imagination that I confess, or the true and
living God who rules and works all. It is only in
doing His will that I prove I love it and accept

54 The Inner Chamber

it, and make myself one with it. And there is
no possible way under heaven of being united to
God BUT BY Being United to His Will in the
doing of it. It is the quiet of the inner chamber,
in the spirit in which I do my private Bible read-
ing, in the determination with which I seek to
have this point absolutely and finally settled, I
Am Going to Do Whatever God Says, that the
awful self-delusion of hearing and not doing must
be conquered.

It may help us if we take some portion of God's
Word and see how we are to deal with it.

Suppose it to be the Sermon on the Mount. I
begin with the first Beatitude: "Blessed are the
poor in spirit." I ask — ^What does this mean?
Am I obeying this injunction? Am I at least
thoroughly in earnest in seeking day by day to
maintain this disposition? As I feel how far my
proud, self-confident nature is from it, am I
willing to wait, and plead with Christ, and believe
that He can work it in me? Am I going to Do
This — to be poor in spirit? Or shall I again be
a hearer and not a doer ?

And so I may go through the Beatitudes, and
through the whole Sermon, with its teaching on
meekness and mercy, on love and righteousness,
on doing everything as unto the Father, and in
everything trusting Him, on doing His will and
Christ's words, and verse by verse ask — Do I know
what this means? Am I living it out? Am I
doing it? Am I what He speaks? And as ever

The Blessedness of the Doer 55

again, the answer comes — I fear not, nay, I see
no possibility of living thus, and doing what He
says, I shall be led to feel the need of an entire
revision of both my creed and conduct. And I
shall ask whether the vow, Whatever He Says
I Am Going to Do^ has ever taken the place
either in my Bible reading or my life which He
demands that it should have.

Ere I know, such questionings may begin to
work in me a poverty of spirit I never knew, and
lead me to an entirely new insight into my need
of a Christ who will breathe in me His own life,
AND Work in Me All He Speaks. I will get
courage in faith to say: I Can Do all things in
Him who strengtheneth me : Whatsoever He saith
in His word, I will do.

XI

KEEPING Christ's commandments

"If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do
them."— John xiii. 17.

The blessedness and the blessing of God's "Word
is only to be known by Doing It.

The subject is of such supreme importance in
the Christian life, and therefore in our Bible
study, that I must ask you to return to it once
more. And let us this time just take the one
expression, Keeping the Word, or keeping the
commandments.

Let us take it first in the farewell discourse.
You may be familiar with the passages, but it
will be of use to look at them together.

"If ye love Me, Keep My Commandments,
and the Father will send you the Comforter"
(John xiv. 15, 16).

" He that hath My commandments, and Keep-
eth Them^ he it is that loveth Me, and he shall
be loved of My Father" (v. 21).

" If a man love Me, He Will Keep My words,
and My Father will love him " (v. 23).

" If ye abide in Me and My Words Abide in
You^ ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done
unto you" (xv. 7).

56

Keeping Christ's Commandments 57

"If Ye Keep My commandments, ye shall
abide in My love'' (xv. 10).

" Ye are My friends, if Ye Do Whatsoever I
Command You" (v. 10).

Study and compare these passages, until the
words enter the heart and work the deep convic-
tion that Keeping Christ's Commandments Is
THE Indispensable Condition of All True
Spiritual Blessing. For the coming of God the
Holy Spirit, and His actual indwelling, for the en-
joyment of the Father's love, the inward manifesta-
tion of Christ, the abode of the Father and the
Son in the heart, the power of prayer, the abiding
in Christ's love, and the enjoyment of His friend-
ship, the keeping of the commandments is the one
requisite. And for the power to claim and enjoy*
these blessings in faith day by day, the childlike
consciousness that we do keep them is indispen-
sable too. And no less indispensable is, for fruit-
ful Bible study, the quiet assurance that dare
expect Divine light and strength with every word
of God because He knows that we are ready to
obey to the very utmost. Through the Will op
God, Delighted in, and Done, Lies Our only
Way to the Heart of the Father, and His
only Way to Our Heart. Keep the Command-
ments : this is the way to every blessing.

See how strikingly all this is confirmed by what
we find in John's first epistle.

"Hereby do we know that we know Him, if
We Keep His commandments. He that saith, I

58 The Inner Chamber

know Him, and Keepeth not His command-
ments, is a liar. But Whoso Keepeth His word,
in him verily is the love of God perfected" (ii.
3-5). The only proof of true, living, saving
knowledge of God; the only proof of not being
self-deceived in our religion; of God's love not
being an imagination, but a possession, is, keeping
His word.

" If our heart condemn us not, we have boldness
toward God; and whatsoever we ask we receive,
Because We Keep His commandments. And He
That Keepeth His commandments, abideth in
Him" (iii. 21, 32, 24). Keeping the command-
ments is the secret of confidence toward God, and
true intimate fellowship with Him.

"This is the love of God that We Keep His
commandments, for whatsoever is begotten of God
overcometh the world" (v. 3, 4). Our profession
of love is worthless, except as it is proved to be true
by the keeping of His commandments in the
power of a life begotten of God. Knowing God,
having the love of God perfected in us, having
boldness with God, and abiding in Him, being
begotten of Him and loving Him — all, all, is
dependent on the one thing — Keeping the Com-
mandments.

It is only as we realise the prominence Christ
and Scripture give to this truth, that we shall
learn to give it the same prominence in our life.
It will become to us one of the keys to true Bible
study. The man who reads his Bible with the

Keeping Christ's Commandments 59

longing and determined purpose to Search out
AND TO Obey Every Commandment of God and
OF Christ, is on the right track to receiving all
the blessing the Word was ever meant to bring.
He will specially learn two things. How he needs
to wait for the teaching of the Holy Spirit to
lead him into all God's will. And what blessed-
ness there is in performing daily duties, not only
because they are right, or he delights in them, but
because they are the will of God. He will find
how all daily life is elevated, when he says as
Christ did : " This commandment received I of
My Father.'^ The Word will become the light
and guide by which all his steps are ordered. And
his life will become the training school in which
the sanctifying power of the Word is proved, and
the mind ever prepared anew for its teaching and
encouragement. And so the keeping of the com-
mandments will be the key to every spiritual
blessing.

Make a determined effort to grasp what this life
of full obedience means. Take some of Christ's
clearest commands : — Love one .another even as I
have loved you; ye ought to wash one another's
feet; ye should do as I have done to you: and
accept a Christlike love and humility as the law
of the supernatural life you are to live.

So far from the sense of failure or impotence
leading you to despair, or to rest contented in
what you think attainable, let it only encourage
you to put your hope more entirely on Him, who

6o The Inner Chamber

by His Spirit will work in you both to will and
to do.

Once again, our one aim must be perfect har-
mony between conscience and conduct. Every
conviction must be carried out into action.
Christ's commands were meant to be obeyed. If
this be not done, the accumulation of Scripture
knowledge only darkens and hardens, and works
that satisfaction with the pleasure which the
acquisition of knowledge brings, which unfits us
for the Spirit's teaching.

I pray you, do not weary of my repeating so
often the blessed, solemn message. In your inner
chamber the question is to be decided whether you
will through the day keep the commandments of
Christ. And there too wiU be decided whether
in future life you are to bear the character of a
man whoUy given up to know and do the will of
God.

XII

LIFE AND KNOWLEDGE

** And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow
the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree
of knowledge of good and evil." — Gen. ii. 9.

There are two ways of knowing things. The
one is in the mind by notion or conception; I
know about a thing. TJie other is in the life; I
know by inward experience. A blind man, who
is clever, may know all that science teaches about
the light, by having books read to him. A child,
or a savage, who has never thought what light
is, yet knows it far better than the blind scholar.
The latters knows all about it by thinking; the
former knows it in reality by seeing and enjoying
it.

It is even so in religion. The mind can form
thoughts about God from the Bible, and know all
the doctrines of salvation, while the inner lift*
does not know the power of God to save. This is
why we read "He that loveth not, knoweth not
God; for God is love." He may know all about
God and about love, he may be able to utter
beautiful thoughts about it; but unless he loves,
he does not know God. Only love can know God.
The knowledge of God is life eternal.
6i

62 The Inner Chamber

God's Word is the word of life. Out of the
heart are the issues of life. The life may be strong,
even where knowledge in the mind is feeble. And
the knowledge may be the object of most diligent
pursuit and of great delight, while the life is not
affected by it.

An illustration may make this plain. Suppose
we could give to an apple tree understanding, with
eyes to see and hands to work, this might enable
the apple tree to do for itself what the gardener
now does, to gather manure or bring moisture.
But the inner life of the apple tree would still be
the same, quite different from the understanding
that had been added to it. And so the inner
divine life in a man is something quite different
from the intellect with which he knows about it.
That intellect is indeed most needful, to offer to
the heart the Word of God which the Holy Spirit
can quicken. And yet it is absolutely impotent,
either to impart, or quicken, the true life. It
is but a servant that carries the food; it is the
heart that must feed, and be nourished and live.

The two trees in Paradise are God^s revela-
tion of the same truth. If Adam had eaten of
the tree of life, he would have received and known
all the good God had for him in living power as
an experience. And he would have known evil
only by being absolutely free from it. But Eve
was led astray by the desire for knowledge —
"the fruit was to be desired to make one wise,''
and man got a knowledge of good without pos-

Life and Knowledge 63

sessing it, a knowledge of it, only from the evil
that was its opposite. And since that day man
has ever sought his religion more in knowledge
than in life.

It Is only Life, Experience, Possession, op
God and His Goodness That Gives True
Knowledge. The knowledge of the intellect can-
not quicken. " Though I understand all mysteries
and all knowledge, and have not love, I am noth-
ing.^^ It is in our daily Bible reading that this
danger meets us; it is there it must be met and
conquered. We need the intellect to hear and
understand God's Word in its human meaning.
But we need to know that the possession of the
truth by the intellect cannot profit but as the Holy
Spirit makes it life and truth in the heart. We
need to yield our heart, and wait on God in quiet
submission and faith to work in us by that Spirit.
1A.S this becomes a holy habit, we shall learn the
art of intellect and heart working in perfect har-
mony, and each movement of the mind being
ever accompanied by the corresponding movement
of the heart, waiting on and listening for the
teaching of the Spirit.

XIII

THE HEART AND THE UNDEESTANDING

"Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean
not unto thine own understanding." — Pbov. iii. 5.

The chief object of the Book of Proverbs is to
teach knowledge and discretion, and to guide in
the path of wisdom and understanding. To under-
stand righteousness, to understand the fear of the
Lord, to find good understanding, it is to this the
Proverbs offer to guide us. But it gives the
warning in the pursuit of this, to distinguish be-
tween trusting to our own understanding, and
intellect, and seeking spiritual understanding,
that which God gives, even an understanding heart.
" Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean
not to thine own understanding." In all our
seeking after knowledge and wisdom, in all our
planning our life, or studying the "Word, we have
these two powers — ^the understanding or intellect,
which knows things from without, by nature and
the conceptions we form, and the heart, which
knows them by experience as it takes them up into
the will and affection.

I am deeply persuaded that one of the chief
reasons why so much Bible teaching and Bible
64

The Heart and the Understanding 65

knowledge is comparatively fruitless, one of the
chief causes of the lack of holiness, and devotion,
and power in the Church, is to be found here —
the trusting to our own understanding in religion.
I beseech my readers to give me a patient hear-
ing here.

Many argue : But surely God gave us our intel-
lect, and without it there is no possibility of
knowing God's "Word. Most true ; but listen. By
the fall our whole human nature was disordered.
The will became enslaved, the affections were
perverted, the understanding was darkened. All
admit the ruin of the fall in the two former,
but practically deny it in the latter. They admit
that even the believer has not in himself the power
of a holy will, and needs the daily renewing of
the grace of Jesus Christ. They admit that he
has not the power of holy affection, loving God
and his neighbour, except as it is wrought in him
unceasingly by the Holy Spirit. But they do not
notice that the intellect is just as much spiritually
ruined and impotent, and incapable of appre-
hending spiritual truth. It was especially the
desire for knowledge, in a way and at a time God
had forbidden it, that led Eve astray, as the out-
come of the temptation. To think that we can
take the knowledge of God's truth for ourselves
out of His word as we will, is still our greatest
danger. We need a deep conviction of the impo-
tence of our understanding really to know the
truth, and of the terrible danger of self-confidence

66 The Inner Chamber

and self-deception in doing so, to see the need
of the word, "Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart, and lean not to thine understanding." It
is with the heart man believeth. It is with all
the heart we are to seek, and serve, and love
God. It is only with the heart we can know
God, or worship God, in spirit and truth. It is
in the heart, therefore, that the Divine Word does
the work. It is into our heart God hath sent
forth the Spirit of His Son. It is the heart, the
inward life of desire and love and will and sur-
render, that the Holy Spirit guides into all the
truth.

In Bible study, "Trust in the Lord with
all thine heart, and lean not to thine own under-
standing."

Trust not, wholly distrust, thy own understand-
ing. It can only give thee thoughts and concep-
tions of Divine things without the reality. It will
deceive thee with the thought that the truth, if
received into the mind, will somehow surely enter
the heart. And so it will blind thee to the terri-
ble experience which is universal, that men daily
read, and every Sunday delight to hear God's
Word, and yet are made neither humble, nor holy,
nor heavenly minded by it.

Instead of trusting the understanding, come
with the heart to the Bible. Instead of trust-
ing the understanding, trust in the Lord, and
that with all thy heart. Let not the understand-
ing, but the whole heart set upon the living God

The Heart and the Understanding 6j

as the Teacher, be the chief thing, when thou
enterest thy closet. Then shalt thou find good
understanding. God will give thee an understand-
ing heart, a spiritual understanding.

You may ask me, as I have been often asked,
" But what am I to do ? How am I to study my
Bible? I see no way of doing so, but by using
the understanding."

Perfectly right. But do not use it for what it
cannot do. Eemember two things. One is, that
it can only give you a picture or thought of
spiritual things. The moment it has done this,
go with your heart to the Lord to make His
Word life and truth in you. The other is, remem-
ber that pride of intellect, the danger of leaning
to your own understanding is unceasing, and that
nothing, not even the most determined purpose,
can save you from this, but only the continual
dependence of the heart on the Holy Spirif s
teaching. It is alone through the Holy Spirit
quickening the Word in the heart, in the dispo-
sition and affections, that He can guide the intel-
lect. ^^ The meek will He guide in judgment ;
the meek will He shew his way." " The fear of
the Lord," — a disposition — "is the beginning of
wisdom." ■

With every thought from the Word the under-
standing grasps, bow before God in dependence
and trust. Believe with the whole heart that God
can and will make it true. Ask for the Holy
Spirit to make it work effectually in the

68 The Inner Chamber

heart. So the Word becomes the strength of our
life.

Persevere in this, and the time will come when
the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the heart and life,
will hold the understanding in subjection, and let
His holy light shine through it.

XIV,

god's thoughts and our thoughts

« As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
my thoughts higher than your thoughts."— Is. Iv. 9.

On earth the words of a wise man often mean
something different from what a hearer under-
stands of them. How natural then that the words
of God, as He understands them, mean something
infinitely higher than we at once appre*hend.

There is very great need for remembering this.
Doing so will lead us continually from resting
content with our knowledge and thoughts of the
Word, to wonder and wait what may be its full
blessing as God has meant it. It will give our
prayer for the Holy Spirit's teaching new point
and urgency, even to show us what has not yet
entered into our heart to conceive. It will give
confidence to the hope that there is for us, even in
this life, a fulfilment beyond our highest thoughts.

God's Word thus has two meanings. The one
is that which it has in the mind of God, making
the human words actually the bearer of all the
glory of Divine wisdom, and power, and love.
The other is our feeble, partial, defective appre-
hension of it. Even after grace and experience have
made such words as the love of God, the grace
69

'JO The Inner Chamber

of God, the power of God, or any one of the many
promises connected with these verities, very true
and real to us, there is still an infinite fulness in
the Word we have not yet known.

How strikingly this is put in our text from
Isaiah. "As the heavens are higher than the
earth." Our faith in the fact is so simple and
clear that no one would dream of trying with his
little arm to reach the sun or the stars. To climb
the highest mountain would not avail. We do
with our whole heart believe it. And now God
says, even so, " my thoughts are higher than your
thoughts.^' Even when the Word has spoken out
God's thoughts, and our thoughts have sought to
take them in, they still remain, as high above our
thoughts as the heavens are higher than the earth.
All the infinities of God and the eternal world
dwell in the Word as the seed of eternal life. And
as the full-grown oak is so mysteriously greater
than the acorn from which it sprang, so God's
words are but seeds from which God's mighty
wonders of grace and power can grow up.

Faith in this Word should teach us two lessons,
the one of ignorance, the other of expectation.
We should learn to come to the Word as little
children. Jesus said, " Thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed
them unto babes." The prudent and the wise are
not necessarily hypocrites or enemies. There are
many of God's own dear children, who, by neglect-
ing to cultivate continually a childlike spirit, and

God's Thoughts and Our Thoughts 71

unconsciously resting on the scripturalness of
their creed, or the honesty of their Scripture
study, have spiritual truth hidden from them,
and never become spiritual men. "Who among
men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit
of the man, which is in him ? Even so the things
of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.
But we received the Spirit of God, that we might
know ! " Let a deep sense of our ignorance, a
deep distrust of our own power of understanding
the things of God even, mark our Bible study.

Then, the deeper our despair of entering aright
into the thoughts of God, the greater the con-
fidence of expectancy may be. God wants to
make His Word true in us. " Thy children shall
be taught of God.^' The Holy Spirit is already
in us to reveal the things of God. In answer to
our humble believing prayer God will, through
Him, give an evergrowing insight into the mystery
of God — our wonderful union and likeness to
Christ, His living in us, and our being as He was
in this world.

Yea more — if our hearts thirst and wait for it,
a time may come when, by a special communica-
tion of His Spirit, all our yearnings are satisfied
and Christ so takes possession of the heart, that,
what was long a faith becomes an experience, that
as the heavens are higher than the earth His
thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

XT]

MEDITATION"

" Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of
the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and
night"— Ps. i. 1, 2. (Josh. i. 8. Ps. cxix. 15, 23, 48,
78, 97, 99 and 148. 1 Tim. v. 15.) " Let the words of
my mouth and the meditation of my heart be accept-
able in Thy sight, O Lord."— Ps. xix. 14 and xlix. 3.

The true aim of education, study, reading, is to
be found, not in what is brought into us, but in
what is brought out of ourselves, by the awakening
into active exercise of our inward power. This is
as true of the study of the Bible, as of any other
study. God's Word only works its true blessing
when the truth it brings to us has stirred the in-
ner life, and reproduced itself in resolve, trust,
love, or adoration. When the heart has received
the Word through the mind, and has had its
spiritual powers called out and exercised on it,
the Word is no longer void, but has done that
whereunto God has sent it. It has become part
of our life, and strengthened us for new purpose
and effort.

It is in meditation that the heart holds and ap-
propriates the Word. Just as in reflection the
understanding grasps all the meaning and bearings
of a truth, so in meditation the heart, assimilates

72

Meditation 73

it and makes it a part of its own life. We need
continual reminding that the heart means the will
and the affection. The meditation of the heart
implies desire, acceptance, surrender, love. Out
of the heart are the issues of life ; what the heart
truly believes, that it receives with love and joy,
and allows to master and rule the life. The intel-
lect gathers and prepares the food on which we are
to feed. In meditation the heart takes it in and
feeds on it.

The art of meditation needs to be cultivated.
Just as a man needs to be trained to concentrate
his mental powers so as to think clearly and accu-
rately, a Christian needs to carefully consider and
meditate, until the holy habit has been formed of
yielding up the whole heart to every word of
God.

The question sometimes is asked, how this
power of meditation can be cultivated. The very
first thing is to present ourselves before God. It
is His Word; that Word has no power of blessing
apart from Him. It is into His presence and fel-
lowship the Word is meant to bring us. Practise
His presence, and take the Word as from Him-
self in the assurance that He will make it work
effectually in the heart. In Psalm cxix. you have
the word seven times, but each time as part of a
prayer addressed to God. ^^I will meditate in
Thy precepts.'^ " Thy servant did meditate in
Thy statutes." " 0 how I love Thy law, it is my
meditation all the day." Meditation is the heart

74 The Inner Chamber

turning towards God with His own Word, seeking
to take it up into the affection and will, into its
very life.

Another element of true meditation is quiet
restfulness. In our study of Scripture, in our en-
deavour to grasp an argument, or to master a
difficulty, our intellect often needs to put forth
its utmost efforts. The habit of soul required in
meditation is different. Here we turn with some
truth we have found, or some mystery in which
we are waiting for divine teaching, to hide the
word we are engaged with in the depth of the
heart, and to believe that, by the Holy Spirit, its
meaning and power will be revealed in our inner
life. " Thou desirest truth in the inward parts ;
and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to
know wisdom." In the description of our Lord's
mother we are told : " Mary kept all these things
and pondered them in her heart.'' In His mother
keeping all these sayings in her heart, we have
the image of a soul that has begun to know Christ,
and is on the sure way to know Him better.

It is hardly necessary to say further that in
meditation the personal application takes a promi-
nent place. This is all too little the case with our
intellectual study of the Bible. Its object is to
know and understand. In meditation the chief
object is to appropriate and experience. A readi-
ness to believe every promise implicitly, to obey
every command unhesitatingly, to "stand per-
fect and complete in all the will of God," is the

Meditation 75

only true spirit of Bible study. It is in quiet
meditation that this faith is exercised, that this
allegiance is rendered, that the full surrender to
all God^s will is made, and the assurance received
of grace to perform our vows.

And then meditation must lead to prayer. It
provides matter for prayer. It must lead on to
prayer, to ask and receive definitely what it has
seen in the Word or accepted in the Word. Its
value is that it is the preparation for prayer, delib-
erate and whole-hearted supplication for what the
heart has felt that the Word has revealed as need-
ful or possible. That means the rest of faith,
that looks upward in the assurance that the Word
will open up and prove its power, in the soul that
meekly and patiently gives itself away to it.

The reward of resting for a time from intel-
lectual effort, and cultivating the habit of holy
meditation, will be that in course of time the two
will be brought into harmony, and all our study
be animated by the spirit of a quiet waiting on
God, and a yielding up of the heart and life to the
Word.

Our fellowship with God is meant for all the
day. The blessing of securing a habit of true
meditation in the morning watch will be, that we
shall be brought nearer the blessedness of the man
of the first Psalm; "Blessed is the man whose
delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law
doth he meditate day and night."

Let all workers and leaders of God's people

^6 The Inner Chamber

remember that they need this more than others,
if they are to train them to it, and to keep up their
own communication unbroken with the only
source of strength and blessing. God says, " I
will be with thee ; I will not fail nor forsake thee.
Only be thou strong and very courageous that
thou mayest observe to do according to all the
law . . . that thou mayest prosper whither-
soever thou goest. This book of the law shall
not depart out of thy mouth ; Thou Shalt Medi-
tate Therein Day and Night . . . Then
thou shalt have good success. ... Be strong
and of a good courage.'^

"Let the words of my mouth and the medita-
tion of my heart, be acceptable in Thy Sight, 0
Lord my Strength and my Redeemer.^^ Let noth-
ing less be your aim — ^that your meditation may be
acceptable in His sight — ^part of the spiritual
sacrifice you offer. Let nothing less be your
prayer and expectation, that your meditation may
be true worship, the living surrender of the heart
to God's Word in His presence.

XVI

REVEALED UNTO BABES

" I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and revealed them unto babes." — Matt. xi. 25 ;
Luke x. 21.

The wise and prudent are the men who are con-
scious and confident of their power of mind and
reason to aid them in their pursuit of Divine
Knowledge. The babes are those whose chief
work is not the mind and its power, but the heart
and its disposition. Ignorance, helplessness, de-
pendence, meekness, teachableness, trust and love
— these are the tempers God seeks in those whom
He teaches. (Ps. xxv. 9, 12, 14, 17, 20.)

One of the most important parts of our devo-
tions is the study of God's Word. Of what deep
importance that we should ever receive the Word
in the Spirit that waits for the Father to reveal its
truth in us. And of what importance that we
should have the child-like, yea the babe-like dispo-
sition to which the Father loves to impart the
secrets of His love. With the wise and prudent
head-knowledge is the first thing ; from them God
hides the spiritual meaning of the Very Thing
They Think They Understand. With the
77

78 The Inner Chamber

babes, not the head and its knowledge but the
heart and Feeling, the sense of humility, love
and trust, is the first thing, and to them God
reveals, in their inner life and experience, the
Very Thing They Kjnow They Cannot Un-
dekstand.

Education tells us that there are two styles of
teaching. The ordinary teacher makes the com-
munication of knowledge his chief object, and
cultivates the powers of the child as far as they
help him to attain his object. The true teacher
considers the amount of knowledge a secondary
thing. His first aim is to develop the power of
mind and spirit, and to aid the pupil, both men-
tally and morally, in using his powers aright in
the pursuit and the application of knowledge.
Even so there are two classes of preachers. Some
pour forth instruction and argument and appeal
unceasingh^, leaving it to the hearers to make
the best use they can of what is brought them.
The true preacher knows how much. depends upon
the state of heart, and seeks, even as our Lord
Jesus did, to subordinate the teaching of objec-
tive truth or doctrine to the cultivation of those
dispositions without which teaching profits little.
A hundred sermons, eloquent and earnest, to the
wise and prudent, to Christians who listen with
the thought that they can understand, and that
what they hear will somehow profit them, will
bring less real blessing, than one sermon to hearers
in whom the preacher has awakened a conscious-

Revealed Unto Babes 79

ness of spiritual ignorance, a babe-like docile
spirit that waits for and depends on, that truly
accepts and obeys, the Father's teaching.

In the secret chamber every man is, as far as
human aid is concerned, his own teacher and
preacher. He is to train himself in the blessed
habit of babe-like simplicity and teachableness.
Eemembering that it was not only needful that
Divine Truth should be revealed in the world, but
that there must be an individual revelation to
each, by the Holy Spirit, his first care is to wait
on the Father to reveal to him, and within him,
the hidden mystery in its power in the inner life.
In this posture he exercises the babe-like spirit,
and receives the Kingdom as a little child. All
Evangelical Christians believe in regeneration.
How few believe that when a man is born of God,
A Babe-like Dependence on God for All
Teaching and Strength Ought to Be His
Chief Characteristic. It was the one thing
our Lord Jesus insisted on above all. When He
pronounced the poor in heart, the meek, the
hungry,, "blessed,'' when He called men to learn
of Him that He was meek and lowly in heart,
when He spoke so often of our humbling ourselves
and becoming as little children, it was because the
first and chief mark of being a child of God, of
being like Jesus Christ, is an Absolute Depend-
ence UPON God for Every Blessing^ and
Specially for Any Eeal EInowledge of Spirit-
ual Things. Let each ask himself: Have I

8o The Inner Chamber

counted the babe-like spirit the first essential in
my Bible study? Of what use is Bible study
without the babe-like spirit? It is the real and
only key to God's school. Would it not be well to
set aside everything to secure this? Then alone
will God reveal His hidden wisdom.

The new birth, being begotten of God, by which
we become God's children, is meant to make us
babes. It will give us the child-spirit as well as
the child-teaching. It cannot do the second with-
out the first. Let us believe and yield ourselves
to the new life in us, to the leading of the Spirit ;
He will breathe in us the spirit of little children.
The first object of Bible study is to learn the hid-
den wisdom of God. The first condition of obtain-
ing this knowledge, is to accept the fact that God
Himself reveals it to us.

The first disposition needed for receiving that
revelation is a babe-like spirit. "We all know how
the first thing a wise workman does is to see that
he has the proper tools, and that they are in proper
order. He does not count it lost time to stop his
work and sharpen the tools. It is not lost time
to let the Bible study wait, till you see whether
you are in the right position — waiting for the
Father's revelation in the meek and babe-like
spirit. If you feel that you have not read your
Bible in this spirit, confess and forsake at once
the self-confident spirit of the wise and prudent.
INTot only pray for the babe-like spirit, but believe
for it. It is in you, though neglected and sup-

Revealed Unto Babes 8i

pressed; you may begin at once as a child of
God to experience it.

Seek not by reflection or argument to bring
this babe-like spirit into your heart. "Work from
within outwards. It is in you, as a seed, in the
new life, born of the Spirit. It must rise and grow
in you as a birth of the indwelling Spirit. In
this faith you must not only pray, but pray also
very specially for this grace of the Spirit, and
exercise it. Live as a babe before God. As a
new-born babe desire the milk of the Word.

And beware of trying to assume this state of
mind only when you want to study Scripture. It
must be the permanent habit of your mind, the
state of your heart. Then alone can you enjoy
the continual guidance of the Holy Spirit.

XVII

LEARNING OF CHRIST

"Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me: for I
am meek and lowly of heart ; and ye shall find rest to
your souls." — Matt. xi. 29.

All Bible study is learning. All Bible study to be
fruitful should be learning of Christ. The Bible
is the school book, Christ is the Teacher. It is He
who opens the understanding, and opens the heart,
and opens the seals. (Luke xxiv. 45, Acts xvi.
14, Eev. V. 9.) Christ is the living eternal Word,
of which the written words are the human expres-
sion. Christ's presence and teaching are the
secret of all true Bible study. The written Word
is powerless, except as it helps us to the Living
Word. No one has ever thought of accusing our
Lord of not honouring the Old Testament. In
His own life He proved that He loved it as coming
out of the mouth of God. He ever pointed the
Jews to it as the revelation of God and the witness
to Himself. But with the disciples it is remark-
able how frequently He spoke of His own teach-
ing as what they most needed, and had to obey.
It was only after His resurrection, when the union
with Himself had been effected, and they had

32

Learning of Christ 83

already received the first breathings of the Spirit
(Jno. XX. 22) that we find Him expounding the
Scriptures. The Jews had their self-made inter-
pretation of the Word: they made it the greatest
barrier between themselves and Him of whom it
spake. It is often so with Christians too; our
human apprehension of Scripture, fortified as it
may be by the authority of the Church, or our
own circle, becomes the greatest hindrance in the
way of Christ's teachings. Christ the Living
"Word, seeks first to find His place in our heart and
life, to be our only Teacher: thus shall we learn
of Him to honour and understand Scripture.

Learn of Me for I Am Meek and Lowly of
Heart. Our Lord here opens up the inmost secret
of His own inner life. That which He brought
down to us from heaven : that which fits Him to be
a Teacher and a Saviour ; that which He has given
to us, and which He wants us to learn of Him:
you find it all in the words, " I am meek and lowly
of heart.'' It is the one virtue that makes Him
the Lamb of God, our suffering Redeemer, our
heavenly Teacher and Leader. It is the one dis-
position which He asks of us in coming to learn
from Him: out of this all else will come. For
our Bible study and all our Christian life you
have here the one condition of truly learning of
Christ. He, the Teacher, meek and lowly of heart,
wants to make you what He is, because that is
salvation. As a learner you must come and study
and believe in Him the meek and lowly One, and

84 The Inner Chamber

seek to learn of Him how to he meek and lowly
too.

And why is this the first and all-important
thing? Because it lies at the root of the true
relationship of the creature to God. God alone
has life and goodness and happiness. As the
God of Love He delights to give and work every-
thing in us. Christ became the Son of Man to
show in what blessed unceasing dependence upon
God man is to live: this is the meaning of His
being lowly in heart. It is in this spirit that
angels veil their faces and cast their crowns before
God. God is everything to them, and they delight
to receive all and to give all. This is the root of
the true Christian life: to be nothing before God
and men; to wait on God alone; to delight in,
to imitate, to learn of Christ, the Meek and Lowly
One. This is the very key to the School of Christ,
the only key to the true knowledge of Scripture.
It is in this character that Christ has come to
teach: it is in this character alone you can learn
of Him. How little in the Christian Church,
humility, the meek and lowly heart, has had the
place that it has in the life of Christ and the
teachings of God's "Word. I am deeply persuaded
that this lack lies at the root of a very large part
of the feebleness and unfruitfulness of which
we hear. It is only as we are meek and lowly
in heart, that Christ can teach us by His Spirit
what God has for us, and that God wiU work in
us. Let each of us begin with ourselves and count

Learning of Christ 85

this as the first condition of discipleship, and the
fir&t lesson the Master will most surely teach ns.
Let us make all our Bible study a learning of
Christ, a trusting Him, who is so meek and gentle
and kind, a waiting for Him, to work His own
spirit and likeness in us. In due time our morn-
ing watch will be the scene of daily fellowship
and daily blessing.

I know what difficulties I have to contend with
in pleading thus that the meek and lowly heart
be made the first consideration in Bible study.
It is hard to make men realise that, in intercourse
with God, disposition and character are every-
thing. It is harder to show them that of all
Christian disposition and character, a meek and
lowly heart is the very seed and root. It is hard
to convince them that without it the profit of
Bible study is very little. It is above all hard to
lead them to understand and believe that the meek
and lowly heart is to be had, because it is the
very thing Christ offers to give, teaching us how
to find and receive it in Himself. In face even
of all these difficulties, I, nevertheless, urge all
Bible students, thoughtfully and prayerfully to
enquire whether the very first question to be
settled in the inner chamber is not this: Is my
heart in the state in which my Teacher desires
it to be ? And if it be not, is not my first work to
yield myself to Him to work it in me?

XVIII

TEACHABLENESS

" Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me : for I am
meek and lowly of heart ; and ye shall find rest to your
souls." — Matt. xi. 29.

The first virtue of a pupil is docility and willing-
ness to be taught. What does this imply? A
consciousness of his own ignorance, a readiness
to give up his own way of thinking or of doing,
and to look at things from the teacher^s stand-
point, a quiet confidence that the master knows
and will show him how to learn to know too. The
meek and lowly spirit listens carefully to know
what the teacher's will is, and at once hastens to
carry it out. If this be the spirit in a pupil it
must be the teacher's fault if he does not learn.

And how is it that, with Christ as our teacher,
there is with many, so much failure, so little real
growth in spiritual knowledge? So 'much hearing
and reading of the Bible, so much profession of
faith in it as our only rule of life, and yet such
a lack of the manifestation of its spirit and its
power? So much often of honest, earnest appli-
cation in the closet and the Bible circle, with
but little of the joy and strength God's Word could
give?

86

Teachableness 87

The question is one of the utmost importance.
There must be some cause why there are so many
disciples of Jesus who think they honestly desire
to know and do His will, and who yet by their
own confession and the evidence of those around
them, are not holding forth the word of life as a
light in the world. If the answer could be found
to the question, their lives might be changed.

Our text suggests the answer : " Take My yoke
upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and
lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest to your
souls.'^ Many have taken Christ as a Saviour
BUT NOT AS A Teacher. They have put their
trust in Him as the Good Shepherd who gave His
life for the sheep ; they know little of the reality
of His daily shepherding His flock, calling every
one by name, or of thus hearing His voice and
following Him alone. They know little of what
it is to follow the Lamb; before everything to
receive from Him the lamb nature, and to seek
like Him to be meek and lowly in heart. It was
by their three years' course in His school that
Christ's disciples were fitted for the baptism of
the Holy Spirit, and the fulfilment of all the
wonderful promises He had given them. It Is
Under the Personal Teaching op Our Lord
Jesus, and Through That Docility of the
Meek and Lowly Heart, Which Daily Waits

FOR AND EeCEIVES AND FOLLOWS THAT TEACH-
ING, that we can truly find rest to our souls. All
the weariness and burden of strain and failure and

88 The Inner Chamber

disappointment, then gives way to that divine
peace which knows that all is being cared for by
Christ Himself.

That taking of Christ's yoke and learning of
Him His meekness and lowliness of heart, and
with that, the teachableness that refuses to know
or do aught in its own wisdom, is to be the spirit
of our whole life, every day and all the day. But it
is especially in the morning hour that this is to
be cultivated, and deliverance sought from self
and all its energy. It is there, while occupied
with the words of God and of Christ and of the
Holy Spirit, that we need daily to realise that
these only profit as they lead to, and are opened
up by, the personal teaching of Christ. It is
there that we daily need to experience that only as
the living Lord Jesus "in whom all the fulness
dwells," in whom all our life and salvation are
gathered up. Himself Comes Near and Takes
Charge of Us^ that His teaching can be received.
And it is there that we must definitely ask and
cultivate the teachableness that takes up His yoke
and learns of Him. Once again, the teachable-
ness is everything. If it be true of the Holy
Spirit who dwells in us, the Spirit of Christ
Jesus, "He shall teach you all things," and if
His whole life and work in us is a Divine teach-
ing, it is equally true that our whole life must
be a Divine teachableness. So only, can our daily
intercourse with God's Word, and our daily life
be what our Lord Jesus can make it.

Teachableness 89

"Unlearning is often the most important part of
learning: wrong impressions, prejudices and pre-
possessions are insuperable obstacles in the way of
learning. Until these have been removed the
teacher labours in vain. The knowledge he com-
municates only touches the surface: deep under
the surface the pupil is guided by that which has
become a second nature to him. The first work
of the teacher is to discover, to make the pupil
see and remove, these hindrances.

There can be no true and faithful learning of
Christ where we are not ready to unlearn. By
heredity, by education, by tradition, we have our
thoughts about religion and God's Word, which
are often the greater hindrance in proportion to
our assurance that they are indeed the truth. To
learn of Christ needs a willingness to subject
every truth we hold to His inspection for criticism
and correction.

Humility is the root virtue of the Christian
life. The law is absolute in God's Kingdom —
"He that humbleth himself shall be exalted."
Our disappointment in striving after higher
degrees of grace, faith, spiritual knowledge, love
to souls and power to bless, is all owing to this.
We have not accepted the humility of Christ as the
beginning and the perfection of His salvation.
"GTod giveth grace to the humble" has a far
wider and deeper application than we think.

Docility is one form of humility. In the morn-
ing watch we place ourselves as learners in Christ's

90 The Inner Chamber

school; let docility, let humility be the distin-
guishing mark of the learner, and, if we feel how
little we have of it, let us listen to the voice that
says, " Take My yoke upon you,^^ and, for all that
this implies — "learn of Me, for I am meek and
lowly of heart. And ye shall find rest to your
souls."

XIX

THE LIFE AND THE LIGHT

"In the beginning was the Word. And the Word
was God. In Him was life. And the Life was the
Light of men." — John i. 1, 4.

" He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness,
but shall have the Light of Life."— John viii. 12.

Because Christ was God, He could be the Word
of God. Because He had the Life of God in
Himself, He could be the revealer of that Life.
And so as the Living Word He is the Life-giving
Word. The written word can be made void and of
none effect where human wisdom is trusted for its
apprehension. It is only as it is accepted as the
seed in which the life of the Living Word lies hid,
to be quickened by the Holy Spirit, that it can be
to us the word of life. Our intercourse with God's
written word ought ever to be inspired and regu-
lated by the faith of the Eternal Word, who was
God.

The same truth comes out in the expression that
follows: The life is the light. When we see the
light shining, we know that there is fire burning
in some form or other. And so in the spiritual
world. There must be life ere there can be light.
There may be reflected light from a dead or dark
91

92 The Inner Chamber

object. There may be a borrowed light without
life. But true life can alone show true light. He
that follows Christ shall have the light of life.

These two statements of one great truth strik-
ingly confirm what we learnt about the Spirit of
God. Even as He knows the things of God be-
cause He is the life of God, so Christ is the Word
because He is God, and has the life of God; and
so the light of God only shines where the life of
God is. All three thoughts bring us again to our
Bible study with the one blessed, but so needful
lesson, that it is only as the written word brings
us the life of the Eternal Word, as its light within
the heart is the shining of a life that is working
there, as the Holy Spirit who knows the things
of God because He is the life of God, makes them
life and truth within us, can our study of Scrip-
ture really bless us.

And so we come back to the one great lesson
the Spirit seeks to enforce in regard to God's
Word — that It Is Only as Scripture is Eeceived
OUT OF THE Life of God into Our Life That
There Is Any Eeal Kjnowledge of It. It is a
seed that bears within it the Divine life: where
it is received in the good soil of a heart that hun-
gers for that life, it will spring up and bring forth
fruit, like all seed, " after its kind.'' It will re-
produce in our life the very life of God, out of
which it came, the very likeness and disposition
of the Father and the Son through the Holy
Spirit. We want to turn all this to practical ac-

The Life and the Light 93

count and to apply it directly to our private Bible
reading.

You want to know how to begin. The rules are
very simple.

The first : " Be still and know that I am God.''
Take time to be quiet and to realise God. " Hold
thy peace at the presence of the Lord.'' " Be
silent before the Lord." "The Lord is in His
Holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before
Him." Worship and wait on Him that He may
speak to thee. The next: Eemember that the
word comes out of the life, the heart of God
carrying His life to impart it to thine. Nothing
less than the life of God is it: nothing less than
the power of God can make it live in thee. The
next : believe in Christ the Living Word. " In
Him was life, and the life — His life, was the
light of men." " He that followeth ME shall have
the light of life." Follow Jesus in love and long-
ing desire, in obedience and service, and so His
life will work in thee, and the life shall be the
light of thy soul.

And then, ask the Father for the Holy Spirit
Who alone Kkoweth the things of God, to make
the word in thy heart living and active. Hunger
for the will of God as thy daily food; thirst for
the living spring of the Spirit within thee ; receive
the word into thy will, thy life, thy joy — ^the life
it brings will give the light with which it shines.

The reason I have so often insisted upon the
truth put forward in the last few chapters is very

94 The Inner Chamber

simple. My own experience has taught me how
long it is before we clearly apprehend that the
word of God must be received into the life and
not only into the mind, and how long again even
after we apprehend it, before we fully believe
and act it out. " To write the same thing to you
is not grievous to me, and for you it is profitable."
Study the lesson till you know it. The word
comes out of the life of God, carries that life in
itself, seeks to enter my life and fill it with the
life of God. This life is the light of men, and
gives the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God.

You may find that this lesson takes more time
than you think, that it hinders you more than it
helps in your Bible lessons, and that it grows
all the more difficult the longer you study it. Be
not afraid or impatient; but be assured that if
you learn it aright, you will bless God that it
has become a key you never had before, to the
hidden treasure of the word, giving you true
wisdom in the hidden part.

So I repeat again the simple words so inexhaus-
tibly blessed and true. As the Spirit that lives in
God alone knows the things of God, It Is alone
THE Spirit Living in Me^ That Can Make Me
Know the Things of God by Impaeting Them
TO My Life

As Christ was the Word because He was God,
and had the life of God, the written word can
only bless me as, through it, the living Word

The Life and the Light 95

brings the life of God unto me. As the life was
in Christ, and as the Life is the Light of men, so
it is only as I have the life of Christ through the
word that I have the light of the knowledge of
God.

XX

THE BIBLE STUDENT

" Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of
the Lord; and in His law doth he meditate day and
night"— Ps. i. 1, 2.

There is a loud call on every side for more, for
truer, Bible study. Evangelists like Mr. Moody
and many others, have proved what power there
is in preaching drawn directly from God's word,
and inspired by the faith of its power. Earnest
Christians have asked: "Why cannot our minis-
ters speak in the same way, giving the very word
of God a larger place ? '' Many a young minister
has come away from the Theological Hall, confess-
ing that he had been taught everything but the
knowledge of how to study the Word himself, and
then to stir up and help others to study it. In
some of our Churches, the desire has been ex-
pressed to supply this need in the training of
ministers. It might appear a very simple thing
to find good men to undertake the work; and yet
it has been found difficult for men with theological
training to turn to the simplicity and directness
of appeal to God's Word, which is needed to show
younger men the way to make Scripture the one
source of their knowledge and teaching. In the
Students' Movement of our day, God be praised^
96

The Bible Student 97

Bible study has had the place of prominence given
to it. There is a wonderful opportunity, as there
is a very great need, for so guiding it that it may
bring a full blessing to the individual lives, by
giving God's word its true place in the work to
be done for Him. Let us look at the principles
underlying the demand for more Bible study, and
in faithfulness to which alone, it can be truly
carried out.

1. God's Word Is the Only Authentic Eeve-
LATiON OF God's Will. All human statements
of Divine truth, however correct, are defective and
carry a measure of human authority. In the
Word, the voice of God speaks to us directly.
Every child of God is called to direct intercourse
with the Father, through the Word. As God
reveals all His heart and grace in it. His child
can, if he receives it from God, get all the life
and power there is in the Word into his own heart
and being. We know how few second-hand reports
of messages or events can be fully trusted. Very
few men report accurately what they have heard.
Every believer has the right and calling, to stand
in direct communication with God. It is in the
Word God has revealed, it is in the Word He still
reveals, Himself to each individual.

2. This Word of God Is a Living Word. It
Carries a Divine Quickening Power in It.
The human expression of the truth is often a
mere conception or image of the truth, appealing
to the mind and having little or no effect. The

98 The Inner Chamber

faith of its being God's own word and of the
presence and power in it, makes it effectual. All
life or spirit creates for itself a form in which it
is made manifest. The words in which God has
chosen to clothe His own Divine thoughts are God-
breathed and the life of God dwells in them. God
is not the God of the dead but of the living. The
word was not only inspired when first given: the
Spirit of God still breathes in it. God is still in
and with His word. Christians and teachers need
to believe this. It will lead them to give the
simple Divine word a confidence that no human
teaching may have.

3. God Himself alone Can, and Most
Surely Will, Be the Interpreter of His Own
Word. Divine truth needs a Divine Teacher.
Spiritual apprehension of spiritual things can only
come of the Holy Spirit. The deeper the convic-
tion of the unique character of the word, essen-
tially different from, and infinitely exalted above,
all merely human apprehension, the more urgently
will the need be felt of a supernatural, a directly
Divine, teaching. And all the more will the bless-
ing be wrought which is the great purpose of the
word. The soul will be brought to seek God Him-
self, and it will be led to find Him in the Holy
Spirit who dwells in the heart. As that Spirit, in
whom God, so wonderfully, has entered our very
life and identified Himself with it, is waited on
and trusted. He will make us to know wisdom in
the hidden part, in the heart and disposition. The

The Bible Student 99

word prayerfully read and cherished in the heart
in this faith, will through the Spirit, be both light
and life within us.

4. The Wokd Then- Brings Us into the
Closest and Most Intimate Fellowship with
God — Unity of Will and Life. In the word
God has revealed His whole heart and all His will :
in His law and precepts what He wills us to do : in
His redemption and His promises what He wills
to do for us. As we accept that will in the word
as from God Himself, and yield ourselves to its
working, we learn to know God in His will, in the
power of which He works in us, and in which His
condescending love is known. And the word works
out His richest purpose as it fills us with the
reverence and dependence that comes from the
Divine presence and nearness. Nothing less than
this must be our aim, may be our experience, in
all our Bible study.

Let us now take these four thoughts over again
and make the practical application.

In Holy Scripture we have the very words in
which the Holy God has spoken and in which He
speaks to us.

These words are, to-day, full of the life of God.
God is in them, and makes His presence and power
known to them who seek Him in them.

To those who ask and wait for the teaching of
the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, the Spirit
will reveal the spiritual meaning and power of the
word.

lOO The Inner Chamber

The word is thus meant every day to be the
means of the revelation of God Himself to the soul
and of fellowship with Him.

Have we learnt to apply these truths? Do we
understand that the word ever says " Seek God.
Hearken to God. Wait for God. God will speak
to you. Let God teach you ? " All we hear about
more Bible teaching and Bible study must lead to
this one thing. We must be men, and we must
help to train others to be men, with whom the
Word is Never Separated from the Living
God Himself, and Who Live as Men to Whom
God in Heaven Speaks Every Day and All
Day.

XXI

WHO ART THOU?

" Set your mind on the things that are above, . . .
for ye died and your life is hid with Christ in God."—
Col. iii. 2, 3. R. V.

In entering into God's presence in the morning
hour much depends upon the Christian realising
not only who God is, but Who He Himself Is,
and what the relation in which he stands to God.
To the question " Who art thou? '' which is asked,
not in words but in spirit, of each one who claims
right of access and an audience from the Most
High, there must be an answer ready in his inmost
consciousness; that consciousness must be nothing
less than a living sense of the place he has in Christ
before God. The mode of expressing it may differ
at different times, in substance it will always be
the same.

Who am I? yes, let me think and say, who, I
am who now come to ask that God shall meet me
here, shall spend this whole day with me? I am
one who knows, by the word and Spirit of God,
that.X,amin-.Chxist, and that my life is hid with
Christ in God. In Christ I died to sin and the
world. I am now taken out of them, separated
from them, and delivered from their power. ^ I
have been raised together with Christ and in Him

102 The Inner Chamber

I live unto God. My life is hid with Christ in God
and I come to God to. claim and obtain all Divine
life that is hidden away in Him for to-day^s need
and supply.

Yes, this is who I am, I say it to God in humble,
holy reverence, as my plea. I say it to myself to
encourage others, as well as myself, to seek and
expect nothing less — grace to live out, here on
earth, the hidden life of heaven. I am one whP
longs to say, who does say, Christ is my life. The
longing of my soul is for Christ, revealed by the
Father Himself within the heart. Nothing less
can satisfy me. My life is hid with Christ. He
can be my life n^ other way than as He is in my
heart. Ye§! with nothing less can I be content
than Christ in the heart. Christ is a Saviour from
sin. Christ as the gift and bringer of God's love.
Christ as an indwelling Friend and Lord.

Oh! my God! if Thou dost ask, "Who art
thou ? '^ listen to my stammering : I live in Christ
and Christ in me. Thou alone canst make me
know and be all it means.

There is more I shall have to say, as my plea
for the grace of God's presence and power all the
day. I come as one who desires, who seeks, to be
prepared to live out the life of Christ to-day on
earth, to translate His hidden heavenly glory,
into the language of daily life, vtdth its disposi-
tions and its duties. As the Christ on earth lived
only to do the will of God, it is my great desire
to stand perfect and complete in all His will. My

Who Art Thou? 103

ignorance of that will, in all its spiritual applica- ^ %

tion to intercourse with the world and men, is very /^fiA^^i^X

great. My impotence is still greater. And yet I

come to God as one who dare not offer less or seek

any compromise, as one who in all honesty accepts

the high calling of living out fully the will of

God in all things.

It is this brings me to the closet. As I think
of aiFmy failures in fulfilling God's will, as I
look forward to all the temptations and dangers
that await me, as I feel my entire insufficiency
and yet say to God— I come to claim the life hid
in Christ, that I may live the life for Christ; I
feel urged and drawn not to be content without
the quiet assurance that God will go with me and
bless me.

Who am I that I should ask these great and
wonderful things of God?

May I indeed expect to live the life hid with
Christ in God, so as to make it manifest in my
mortal body? I may; for it is God Himself will
work it in me by the Holy Spirit dwelling in me.
The same God who raised Christ from the dead,
and then set Him at His right hand, has raised
me with Him and given me the Spirit of the glory
of His Son in my heart. AJife iit Christy given
up to know and do all God^s will, is the life God
Himself will work and maintain increasingly in
me by the Holy Spirit. And when I come in the
morning and present myself before Him to take
up afresh the life He has hidden in Himself for

104 The Inner Chamber

me, where His Son is hidden, and live it out in
the flesh, I can wait confidently and quietly, as
one in whom the Spirit dwells, for the Father to
give the fresh anointing that teacheth all things,
and Himself to take charge of the new day He
has given me.

My brother, I am sure you feel of what infinite
importance it is, if the morning hour is to secure
God's presence for the day, that you take firm
stand on nothing less than the ground of a full
redemption. Believe what God says to you. Ac-
cept what God has bestowed on you in Christ.
Be consciously and openly what God has made you
to be. Take time before God to know it and say
it. How much in a battle depends upon an im-
pregnable position. Take your place Where God
Has Placed You.

The very attempt to do this, may at times in-
terfere with your ordinary Bible study, or prayer.
It will be no loss. It will be fully recompensed
later. Your life depends upon knowing who your
God is, AND Who You Are as His Redeemed One
IN Christ. The life of every day depends on it ;
when once you have learned the secret, it will, even
when you do not think of it, be the strength of
your heart, both in going in to God, and going
out with Him to the world.

XXII

THE WILL OF GOD

"Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."—
Matt. vi. 10.

1. The will of God is the living power to which
the world owes its existence. Through that will,
and according to that will, it is what it is. It is
the expression or manifestation or embodiment of
that Divine Will in its wisdom, power and good-
ness. It has, in beauty and glory, but what it
owes to God's having willed it. As that Will
formed it, so it upholds it every day. Creation
thus does what it was destined for, it shows forth
the glory of God. " They gave glory to Him that
liveth for ever and ever, saying. Thou art worthy
to receive glory, for Thou hast created all things,
and because of Thy will they are, and were
created.^'

2. This is true of inanimate nature. It is still
more true of intelligent creatures. The Divine
Will undertook the creation of a creature will in
its own image and likeness, with the living power
to know and accept and co-operate with that Will
to which it owed its being. The blessedness of the
unf alien angels, consists in counting it their high-
est honour and happiness to be able to wiU and

105

lo6 The Inner Chamber

do exactly what God wills and does. The glory
of heaven is that God's will is done there. The
sig,,^^. misery of fallen angels and men, consists
simply in their having turned away from, and
refused to abide in, and to do, the will of God.

3. Eedemption is nothing but the restoration
of God's will to its place in the world. To this
end Christ came and Showed in a Human Life,
How Man Has but One Thing to Live for^ the
Doing of God's Will. He showed us how there
was one way of conquering self-will — ^by a death ^ to
it, in obeying God's will even unto death. So
He atoned for our self-will and conqueredjt for
us, and opened a path through death and resur-

^i^A^^ection, into a life entirely united with, and de-
voted to, the will of God.

4. God's redeeming will is now able to do in
fallen man, what His creating will had wrought
and ever works in nature, or in unfallen beings.
In Christ and His example, God Has Revealed
THE Devotion to and the Delight in His
WiHi, WHICH He Asks and. Expects of Us. In
Christ and, His Spirit He renews and takes pos-
session of our will : works in it both to will and to
do, making us able and willing to do all His will.

He Himself worketh all things after the coun-
sel of His will. "He makes us perfect in every
good thing to do His will, working in us that
which is pleasing in His sight." As this is re-
vealed by the Holy Spirit, and believed, and re-
ceived into the heart, we begin to get an insight

The Will of God 107

into the prayer, "Thy will be done on earth as
it is in heaven/^ and the true desire is awakened
for the life it promises.

5. How essential it is to the believer that he
realise his relations to God's will, and its claim on
him.

Many, many, believers have no conception of
what their faith or their feeling ought to be in
regard to the will of God. How few who say : My
Whole Thought of Blessedness is in INT othing
BUT THE Most Complete Harmony with the
Will of God. I feel my one need to be, the ever
maintained surrender, not, in the very least thing,
ever to do other than what God wills me to do. By
God's grace every hour of my life may be a living
in the will of God, and doing it as it is done in
heaven.

6. It is only as a living faith in the Divine
Will, working out its purposes increasingly in us,
mastersjthejieart, that we shall have the courage
to believe in the answer to the prayer our Lord
taught us. It is only as we see, that it is through
Jesus Christ, that this working of God's will in us
is carried out, that we shall understand how it is
the close union to Him that gives the confidence
that God will work all in us. And it is only this
confidence in God, through Jesife Christ, that will
assure us, that we too can do our part, and that
our feeble will on earth can truly ever correspond
and co-operate with the will of God. Let us but
accept our destiny and our obligation as the one

lo8 The Inner Chamber

thing our heart desires, that in everything the
will of God be done in ns and by ns, as it is done
in heaven; that-Jaith will overcome the world.

7. The will may not be disconnected from its
living union with the Father here, nor the living
presence of the Blessed Son. It is only by a
divine guidance given through the Holy Spirit,
that the will of God in its beauty, in its applica-
tion to daily life, in its ever-growing revelation,
can be truly known. 'I]nsJea(Jiing_wilLlifi-^iYen,
not to the wise and prudent, but to the babes, the
men of childrlike ^disposition, wh<gLAre_jwilling. to
wartior, and-depend-on what is.^iven_thgm. The
Divine guidance will lead in the path of God's
wHl.

8. Our secret intercourse with God is the place
where we repeat and learn the great lessons. . . .

The God whom I worship asks of me perfect
union with His will. . . . My worship means :
" I delight to do Thy Will, 0 God." ... The
morning hour, the inner chamber, the secret inter-
course with God, as in these the knowledge of God's
will, the power to perform it, the entire and joy-
ful surrender to do all God wills, are sought and
cultivated, our study of God's word and our prayer
will bring their true and full blessing.

XXIII

FEEDING ON THE T70ED

" Thy words were found and I did eat them ; and
Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my
heart." — Jeb. xv. 16.

Here you have three things. The Finding of
God's word. This only comes to those who seek
diligently for it. Then the Eating. This means
the personal appropriation for our own suste-
nance, the taking up into our being the words of
God. " Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God.'^ And then the Eejoicing, " The King-
dom of Heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field
which, when a man hath found, he hideth, and for
joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and
buyeth that field." There we have the finding,
and the appropriating, and the rejoicing. " Thy
words Were Found, and I Did Eat them, and
Thy word was the Joy and Eejoicing of my
heart."

Eating is here the central thought. It is pre-
ceded by the searching and finding: it is accom-
panied and followed by the rejoicing. It is the
only aim and use of the one; it is the only cause
109

no The Inner Chamber

and life of the other. In the secrecy of the inner
chamber how much depends on this — I Did Eat
them I

To realise the difference between this and the
finding of God's words, compare the corn a man
may have stored in his granary, with the bread he
has on his table. All the diligent labour he has
bestowed in sowing and harvesting and garnering
his grain, all the rich reward he has had for his
care, cannot profit him, except as he feeds on the
daily portion of the bread his body requires. In
the finding, the harvesting, and garnering, the
greater the quantity and the speedier the work —
these were the things to be looked at. In the eat-
ing, the very opposite takes place — here it is the
small quantity, and the slow and unceasing con-
tinuance, that characterises the appropriation. Do
you see the application of this to your Scripture
study in the morning watch? You need to Fiistd
God's words, and by careful thought to master
them, so as to have them stored in mind and
memory for your own use, and that of others. In
this work there may often be great joy, the joy
of harvest or of victory; the joy of treasure se-
cured, or difficulties overcome; and yet we must
remember this finding and possessing the words
of God is not yet that eating of them which alone
brings Divine life and strength to the soul.

The fact of being occupied with, and possessing
good wholesome corn, will not nourish a man. The
fact of being deeply interested in the knowledge

Feeding on the Word iii

of God's word will not of itself nourish the soul.
*' Thy words were found " that was the first thing.
" And I did eat them '' — that brought the joy and
rejoicing.

And what is this eating? The corn which the
husbandman had grown and rejoiced in as his
very own, could not nourish his life, until he took
it up and ate it, and so completely assimilated it,
that it became part of himself, entering into his
blood, forming his very bone and flesh. This has
to be done in a small quantity at a time, two or
three times a day, every day of the year. This is
the law of eating. It is not the amount of truth
I gather from God's word; it is not the interest
or success of my Bible study ; it is not the increased
clearness of view or largeness of grasp I am ob-
taining, that secure the health and growth of the
spiritual life. By no means. All this often leaves
the nature very much unsanctified and unspiritual
with very little of the holiness or humility of
Christ Jesus: something else is needed. Jesus
said : My Meat Is to Do the will of Him that sent
me. Taking a small portion of God's word, some
definite command or duty of the new life, quietly
receiving it into the will and the love of the heart,
yielding the whole being to its rule, and vowing,
in the power of the Lord Jesus, to perform it : this,
and then Going to Do It^ this is eating the word,
taking it so into our inmost being, that it becomes
a constituent part of our very life. The same with
a truth, or a promise; what you have eaten now

112 The Inner Chamber

becomes part of yourself, you carry it with you
where you go as part of the life you live.

You see at once how the two points of difference
between the corn in the granary and the bread
on the table, cover all your Bible study. The
gathering of Scripture knowledge is one thing.
The eating of God^s word, the receiving it into
your very heart by the power of the life-giving
Spirit, is something very different. And you see
how the two laws of eating the food, in contrast
to those of finding it, must always be obeyed.
You can gather and garner grain to last for years.
You cannot swallow a large enough quantity of
bread to last for days. Day by day, and more
than once a day, you take your day's food. And
so the eating of God's word must be in small por-
tions, just as much as the soul can each time
receive and digest. And this, day by day, from
one end of the year to the other.

It is such feeding on the word which will
enable me to say : " And Thy word was the joy
and rejoicing of my heart." George Muller says
that he learned that he ought not to stop reading
the Word until he felt happy in God : then he felt
fit to go out to his day's work.

XXIV

HOLIDAYS

"If the master of the house had known in what
hour the thief was coming he would have watched
and not left his house to be broken through." — Luke
xii. 39.

In an address on Education Edward Thring says :
" The mighty leisure hours with their occupations
are all-powerful. . . . The mighty question of
leisure hours ought to be the most important ques-
tion of all since it affects the character most.
, . . Leisure hours are the hinge on which true
education turns/^ This great master in the science
of education had seen, that noble character, and
truth of being, come first, and then after that, as
second, the training of skill and strength. He had
seen, too, that while a teacher can do much in
word and deed by high belief and true work to
stimulate 'and to guide, every boy has to work out
his own character. And because it is in the leisure
hours, when free from constraint and observation,
that the boy shows what is really uppermost within
him, that he spoke of the leisure hours as all-
important and all-powerful, the hinge on which
true education turns.
In religion this is intensely true. Thousands of
"3

114 The Inner Chamber

students have felt it, without knowing how to
express or explain it. At college or school their
morning watch has had its place in their time
table. The whole mind is braced up to regular
and systematic work, and the time for devotion is
as duly kept as that for a class or private study.

When the time of relaxation comes, and one is
free to do exactly as one likes, many a one finds
that the morning watch and its fellowship with
God had not become so natural, such a necessity
of the spiritual life and such joy, that its observ-
ance could not interfere with our holiday pleasure.
The holiday becomes the test of character, the
proof of how far one could say with Job, " I have
esteemed the words of thy mouth more than my
necessary food.^' The question of leisure hours is
indeed all important. In them I turn freely and
naturally to what I love most. In them I prove
and increase the power to hold what I have.

J^^jteacher in a large school in America is re-
ported to have said, "the greatest difficulty with
which we have to contend is the summer vacation.
Just when we have brought a boy up to a good
point of discipline, and he responds to the best
ideals, we lose him, andVhen he comes back in
the autumn, we have to begin and do it all over.
The summer holiday simply demoralises him."
This statement, referring to ordinary study and
duty, is strong: within certain limits it is no less
applicable to the religious life. The sudden
relaxation of regular habits, and the subtle

Holidays 1 15

thought that perfect liberty to do as one likes
means perfect happiness, throws many a young
student back in his Christian life. There is no
point at which it is more needful that older and
more experienced members of the Students' As-
sociation should help and guard their younger
members than this. The attainment of months
may be lost bx the^ne^ledLol A.."^YeeL We know
not in what hour the thief cometh. The spirit
of the morning watch means unceasing vigilance
all the day and every day.

There are various aspects in which the danger,
and safety from it, may be put before the student.
With the holiday we are set free from the school
laws under which we live during our stay there.
But there are other laws: laws of morality, laws
of health, from which there is no relaxation. Let
the student be warned that the call to daily fellow-
ship with God belongs not to the former but the
latter class. As much as he needs every day during
the holidays to eat and breathe, he needs Every
Day to Eat the Beead and Breathe the Air
OF Heaven.

Make it clear that the morning watch is not
only a duty, but an unspeakable privilege and
pleasure. Fellowship with God, abiding in Christ,
loving the Word and meditating on it all the day —
to the new nature these things are life and
strength, health and gladness. Look upon them in
this light; believe in the power of the new nature
within, and act upon it; though you do not feel

Ii6 The Inner Chamber

it, it will come true. Count it a joy, and it will
become a joy to you.

Above all, realise that the world is needing you
and depending on you to be its light. Christ is
waiting for you as a member of His body, day by
day, to do His saving work through you. Neither
he, nor the world, nor you, can afford to lose a
single day. God has created and redeemed you,
that through you He may, as unceasingly as
through the sun He lightens the world, let His
light and life and love shine out upon men. You
need every day anew to be in communication with
the fountain of all light. Bo not think of asking
for a holiday relief from this intercourse. Still
less Take it. Prize the holiday for the special
time it gives you to study what lay outside your
ordinary Bible study course. Prize your holiday
for the special opportunity of more fellowship
with the Father and the Son. Instead of its
becoming a snare, instead of all your energy being
exhausted in just being kept from losing ground,
prize the holiday as a blessed time for grace and
victory over self and the world, of great increase
of grace and strength, of being blessed and made
a blessing.

XXV

THE INWARD AND THE OUTWAKD

" Ye fools, did not He that made that which is with-
out make that which is within also." — Luke xi. 40.

Every spirit seeks to create for itself a form or
shape in which its life is embodied. The outward
is the visible expression of the hidden inward life.
The outward is generally known before the inward ;
through it the inward is developed and reaches its
full perfection, as the apostle says in 1 Cor. xv.
46. " Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual
but which is natural, then that which is spiritual."
To understand and maintain the right relation
between the inward and the outward is one of the
greatest secrets of the Christian life.

If Adam in paradise had not listened to the
tempter, his trial would have resulted in the per-
fecting of his inward life. It was his sin and his
ruin, and the cause of all his misery, that he gave
himself up to the power of the visible outward
world. Instead of seeking his happiness in the
hidden inward life of a heart in which God^s com-
mand was honoured, in the inward dispositions of
love and faith, of obedience and dependence, he
fixed his desire on the world without him, on the
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Il8 The Inner Chamber

pleasure and the knowledge of good and evil that
it could give him.

All false religion, from the most degrading
idolatry to the corruption of Judaism and Chris-
tianity, has its root in this, that what is outward,
what can please the eye, or interest the mind, or
gratify the taste, takes the place of that truth in
the inward part, that hidden wisdom in the heart
and life which God seeks and gives.

The great mark of the New Testament is that
it is a dispensation of the inner life. The promise
of the new covenant is : "I will put My law in
Their Inward Parts and in Their Hearts will
I write it.^' "A new heart also will I give you and
a new spirit will I put Within You and I will
put my Spirit Within You.'' The promise of
our Lord Jesus was " The Spirit of truth Shall
Be in You. In that day ye shall know that I Am
IN You.^' It is in the state of heart that religion
consists, in a heart into which God hath sent forth
the Spirit of His Son, a heart in which the love
of God is shed abroad, that true salvation is found.
The inner chamber, with its secret intercourse with
the Father, who seeth in secret, is the symbol and
the training school of the inner life. The true
and faithful daily use of the inner chamber
will make the inner hidden life strong and
glad.

In all our religion the great danger is giving
more time and interest to the outward means than
the inward reality. It is not the intensity of your

The Inward and the Outward 119

Bible study, it is not the frequency or the fervency
of your prayers or good works, that necessarily
constitutes a true spiritual life. Xo! what we
need is, to realise that, as God is a Spirit, so there
is a spirit within us that can know and receive
Him and become conformed to His likeness, and
be partaker of the very dispositions that animate
Him as God in His goodness and love.

" Firmly settle this in thy mind, that all our
salvation consists in the manifestation of the
nature, life and spirit of Christ Jesus in our out-
ward and inward new man. This alone renews
and regains the first life of God in the soul of man.
Wherever thou goest, whatever thou doest, at home
or abroad in the field, do all in a desire of union
with Christ, in imitation of His tempers and in-
clinations, and long for nothing, desire nothing
so much, as that which exercises and increases the
spirit and life of Christ in thy soul, and to have
all within thee changed into the temper and spirit
of the holy Jesus.

Consider the treasure thou hast within thee, the
Saviour of the world, the eternal Word of God,
hid in thy heart as a seed of the Divine Nature
which is to overcome sin and death within thee,
and generate the life of heaven again in thy
soul.

Turn to thy heart, and thy heart will find its
Saviour, its God, within itself. Thou seest and
feelest nothing of God, because thou seekest for
Him abroad, in books, in the church, in outward

120 The Inner Chamber

exercises; but there thou wilt not find Him till
thou hast first found Him in thy heart. Seek for
Him in thy heart and thou wilt never seek in vain,
for there He dwells, there is the seat of His light
and Holy Spirit P^

XXVI

THE DAILY RENEWAL — ITS POWER

"Though our outward man perish, yet the inward
man is renewed day by day." — 2 Cob. iv. 16.

" According to His mercy He saved us by the wash-
ing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy
Ghost."— 1 Tit. iii. 5.

With every new day the life of nature is renewed.

As the sun rises again with its light and warmth,

the flowers open, and the hirds sing, and life is

everywhere stirred and strengthened. As we rise

from the rest o.f sleep and partake of our morning

food, we feel that we have gathered new strength

for the duties of the day. The inner chamber is

the standing confession of the Need Our Inward

Life Has of Daily Kenewal too. It is only by ■,

fresh nourishment from God's Word, and fresh

intercourse with God Himself in prayer, that the

vigour of the spiritual life can be maintained and ^ii^ -ot c^v^

grow. Though our outward man perish, though ;,Hf'v-. < .*i

the burden of sickness or suffering, the strain of ^

work and weariness may exhaust or enfeeble us,'^ '

the inward man can be renewed day by day.

A quiet time and place, with the Word and
prayer, are the means of the renewal. But only this
when as means they are animated by the divine
power which works through them. That power is

121

122 The Inner Chamber

— the Holy Spirit, the mighty power of God that
worketh in us. Our study of the inner chamber
and the inner life it represents, would be defective
if we did not give its due place to the daily re-
newal of the inward man, which it is the function
of the blessed Spirit ever to work. In the text
from Titus we are taught that we have been " saved
by the washing of regeneration and Eenew-
ING OF THE Holy Ghost/' The two expressions
are not meant to be a repetition. The regeneration
,is one great act, the beginning of the Christian
(life; the renewing of the Holy Ghost is a work
,'that is carried on continuously and never ends.
In Eomans xii. 2 we read of the progressive
transformation of the Christian life, that it is
by " THE Eenewing op the Mind.'' - In Ephe-
sians iv. 23, while the word "put off the old
man" (in the aorist) indicates an act done once
for all, the word, "Be Renewed in the Spirit
OF Your Mind" is in the present tense,
and points to a progressive work. Even so in
Colossians iii. 10 we read, "ye have put on the
new man, which is renewed [not, has been] in the
image of Him that created him.^' It is the blessed
Spirit to whom we are to look, on whom we
can count, for the daily renewal of the inner man
in the inner chamber.

Everything depends, in our secret devotions,
upon our maintaining the true relation to the ador-
able third person of the blessed Trinity, through
Whom alone the Father and the Son can do their

The Daily Renewal — Its Power 123

work of saving love, through Whom alone the
Christian can do his work. That relation may be
expressed in the two very simple words, faith and
surrender.

Faith. Scripture says, " God hath sent forth the
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba,
Father.^' The child of God, the very feeblest, who
would in his morning devotion offer up prayer,
that shall be pleasing to the Father, and be a
blessing to himself, must remember that he has re-
ceived the Holy Spirit as the spirit of prayer,
and that His help is indispensable to enable us
to pray effectually. Even so with the Word of God.
It is by the Holy Spirit alone that the truth in its
divine meaning and power can be revealed to us,
and do its work in our heart. If the daily renewal
of the inward man in the morning hour is to be a
reality, take time to meditate, and to worship, and
to believe with your whole heart that the Holy
Spirit has been given you, that He is within you,
and that through Him God will work the bless-
ing which He gives through prayer and the Word.

Surrender. Do not forget that the Holy Spirit
must have entire control. " As many as are Led by
THE Spirit of God they are the sons of God. They
Walk after the Spirit, not after the flesh.^^ It is
the ungrieved presence of the Spirit that can give
the Word its light and power, and keep us in that
blessed life of child-like confidence and child-like
obedience which is well pleasing to God. Let us
praise God for this wonderful gift, the Holy Spirit

124 The Inner Chamber

in His renewing power, and let ns look with new
joy and hope to the inner chamber as the place
where the inner man can indeed be renewed from
day to day. So shall life be kept ever fresh;
so shall we go on from strength to strength, so
shall we bear much fruit, that the Father may be
glorified.

If all this be true, what need that we know the
Holy Spirit aright. As the Third Person, it is His
office and work to bring the life of God unto us, to
hide Himself in the depth of our being and make
Himself one with us, to reveal there the Father
and the Son, to be the mighty Power of God work-
ing in us, and to take control of our entire being.
He asks but one thing, — simple obedience to His
leading. The truly yielded soul will find in the
daily renewing of the Holy Ghost the secret of
growth and strength and joy.

XXVII

THE DAILY RENEWAL — THE PATTERN"

" Seeing that ye have . . . put on the new man,
which is being renewed unto knowledge after the
Image of Him that created him." — Col. iii. 9, 10.

" If so be that ye heard Him and were taught in
Him . . . that ye be renewed in the spirit of your
mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath
been created in righteousness and holiness of truth." —
Eph. iv. 21, 23, 24.

In every pursuit it is of consequence to have
the goal clearly defined. It is not enough that
there be movement and progress, we want to know
w^hether the movement be in the right direction,
straight for the mark ; and especially when we are
acting in partnership with another, on whom we
are dependent, do we need to know that our aim
and his are in perfect accord. If our daily re-
newal is to attain its object we need to know
clearly, and hold firmly to what its purpose is.

" Ye have put on the new man, which is being
renewed unto knowledge." The Divine life, the
work of the Holy Spirit within us, is no blind
force, as in nature. We are to be workers together
with God ; our co-operation is to be intelligent and
voluntary, " The new man is being renewed day by
day UNTO Knowledge."" There is a knowledge

125

126 The Inner Chamber

which the natural understanding can draw from
the Word, but which is without life and the
power, the real truth and substance, which the
spiritual knowledge brings. It is the renewing of
the Holy Ghost that gives the true knowledge,
which does not consist in thought and conception,
but in an inward tasting, a living reception of
the very things themselves of which the words
and thoughts are but the images. *^ The new
man is being renewed unto knowledge.^' How-
ever diligent our Bible study may be, there is
no true knowledge gained any farther than the
spiritual renewal is being experienced; "the re-
newal in the spirit of the mind," in its life and
inward being, alone brings true Divine knowledge.

And what is now the pattern that will be re-
vealed to this spiritual knowledge which comes out
of the renewal as its true and only aim ? The new
man is being renewed unto knowledge, after the
Image of Him That Created Him Nothing
less than the image, the likeness of God. That is
the one aim of the Holy Spirit in His daily re-
newing ; that must be the aim of the believer who
seeks that renewing.

This was God's purpose in creation, "Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness." How
little the infinite glory of these words is consid-
ered. For nothing less than this, did God breathe
His own life into man, that it might reproduce in
man on earth a perfect likeness to God in heaven.
Jn Christ, that image of God has been revealed

The Daily Renewal — The Pattern 127

and seen in human form. "We have been predes-
tined and redeemed and called, we are being
taught and fitted by the Holy Spirit, to be con-
formed to the image of the Son, to be imitators
of God, and to walk even as Christ walked. How
can the daily renewal be carried on, what can
the daily Bible study and prayer profit, unless
we set our heart on what God has set His on, —
THE New Man Being Renewed Day by Day

AFTER THE ImAGE OF HiM ThAT CREATED HiM.

In the second passage, we have the same thought
expressed somewhat differently. Be renewed in
the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man,
which AFTER GoD^ according to the likeness of God,
hath been created in righteousness and holiness of
truth. Righteousness is God's hatred of sin, and
maintenance of the right. Holiness is God's in-
effable glory, in the perfect harmony of His right-
eousness and love. His infinite exaltation above
the creature. His perfect union with him. Right-
eousness in man includes all God's will for our
duty to Him or our fellowmen: holiness our per-
sonal relation to Himself. As the new man has
been created, so it has daily to be renewed, " after
God in righteousness and holiness of truth.'' It
is to secure this that the power of the Holy Ghost
is working in us. It is to secure this that He waits
for us day by day to yield ourselves to Him, in
His renewing grace and power.

The daily returning morning hour is the time
for securing the daily renewing of the Holy Ghost

128 The Inner Chamber

into the image of God as righteousness and holi-
ness of truth. What need of meditation and prayer
to get the heart set upon what God is aiming at,
and get a true vision of the wondrous possibility:
the inward man renewed day by day into the very
likeness of God, changed into the same image as
by the Spirit of the Lord. Christian student ! let
nothing less be thy aim, or satisfy thine aspira-
tions. The image of God, the life of God is in
thee. His likeness can be seen in thee. Separate no
longer God and His likeness, let everyone approach
to Him, let all trust in Him, mean nothing less
than finding Him, in His likeness wrought into
thee by the renewing of the Holy Spirit.

Let this be thy daily prayer, to be renewed after
the image of Him who created thee.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE DAILY RENEWAL — ITS COST

" Wherefore we faint not ; but though our outward
man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day
by day."— 2 Cob. iv. 16.

" Be not fashioned according to this world ; but be
ye transformed by the renewing of your mind."—
BoM. xii. 2.

It is not a little or an easy thing to be a full-
grown, strong Christian. On God's side, it means
that it cost the Son of God His life, that it needs
the mighty power of God to new create a man, and
that nothing less than the unceasing daily care
of the Holy Spirit can maintain that life.

From man's side it demands that when the new
man is put on, the old man he put off. All the dis-
positions, habits, pleasures, of our own nature, that
make up the life in which we have lived, are to be
put away. All we have by our birth from Adam,
is to be sold, if we are to possess the pearl of great
price. If a man is to come after Christ, he is
to deny himself, and take up his cross, to forsake
all and follow Christ in the path in which He
walked. He is to cast away not only all sin, but
everything, however needful and legitimate and
precious, that may become the occasion of sin ; to
pluck out the eye, or cut off the hand. He is to
129

130 The Inner Chamber

hate his own life, to lose it, if he is to live in " the
power of an endless life." It is a solemn thing, far
more solemn than most people think, to be a true
Christian.

This is specially true of the daily renewing of
the inward man. Paul speaks of it as being ac-
companied and conditioned by the decaying of
the outward man. The whole epistle (2 Cor.)
shows us how the fellowship of the sufferings of
Christ, even to conformity to His death, was the
secret of his life in power and blessing to the
Churches. ^^ Always bearing about in the body the
dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be
manifested in our body. For we which live are
always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that
the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our
mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but
life in you.'' The full experience of the life in
Christ in our person, our body, our work for
others, depends upon our fellowship in His suf-
fering and death. There can be no large measure
of the renewal of the inward man, without the
sacrifice, the decaying of the outward.

To be filled with heaven, the life must be emp-
tied of earth. We have the same truth in our sec-
ond text, " Be ye transformed in the renewing of
your mind." An old house may be renewed, and
yet keep very much of its old appearance; or the
renewal may be so entire that men exclaim what a
transformation! The renewing of the mind by
the Holy Spirit means an entire transfornaation,

The Daily Renewal — Its Cost 131

an entirely different way of thinking, judging, de-
ciding. The fleshly mind gives place to a " spirit-
ual understanding '' (Col. i. 9 ; 1 Jolin v. 20). This
transformation is not obtained but at the cost of
giving up all that is of nature. " Be not fashioned
according to this world, but be ye transformed."
By nature we are of this world. When renewed by
grace we are still in the world, subject to the
subtle all-pervading influence from which we
cannot withdraw ourselves. And what is more,
the world is still in us, as the leaven of the nature
which nothing can purge out but the mighty
power of the Holy Spirit, filling us with the life
of heaven.

Let us allow these truths to take deep hold
and master us. The Divine transformation, by
the daily renewing of our mind into the image of
Him who is far above, can proceed in us no
faster and no farther than our seeking to be freed
from every vestige of conformity to this world.
The negative, " Be not fashioned according to this
world,^' needs to be emphasised as strongly as the
positive, " be ye transformed." The spirit of this
world and the Spirit of God contend for the pos-
session of our being. Only as the former is known
and renounced and cast out, can the heavenly
Spirit enter in, and do His blessed work of renew-
ing and transforming. The whole world and
whatever is of the wordly spirit, must be given up.
The whole life and whatever is of self must be
lost. This daily renewal of the inward man costs

132 The Inner Chamber

much, that is, as long as we are hesitating, or try-
ing to do it in our own strength. When once we
really learn that the Holy Spirit does all, and in
the faith of the strength of the Lord Jesus have
given up all, the renewing becomes the simple,
natural, healthy, joyous growth of the heavenly
life in us.

The inner chamber then becomes the place for
which we long daily, to praise God for what He
has done, and is doing, and what we know He will
do. Day by day, we yield ourselves afresh to the
blessed Lord who has said, " He that believeth on
Me out of him shall flow rivers of living water/'
" The renewing of the Holy Ghost " becomes one
of the most blessed verities of our daily Christian
life.

XXIX

HOLINESS — THE CHIEF AIM OF BIBLE STUDY
"Sanctify them in Thy truth, Thy Word is Truth,"

In his great intercessory prayer our Lord spoke
of the words which the Father had given Him,
of His own giving them to His disciples, and of
their having received and believed them. It
was this that made them disciples. It was their
keeping these words that would really enable them
to live the life and do the work of true disciples.
Eeceiving the ^Toeds of God from Christ
AND Keeping Them, the Mark and Power of
True Discipleship.

In praying the Father to keep them in the world
when he had left it, our Lord asks that He would
sanctify them in the truth, as it dwells and works
in His word. Christ had said of Himself, " I am
the truth.'' He was the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth. His teaching was
not like that of the law which came by Moses,
giving a knowledge, a promise of good things
to come which was but an image or a shadow.
" The words I speak unto you are spirit and
life," giving the very substance and power and
Divine possession of what they speak of. Christ
had spoken of the Spirit as the Spirit of truth
133

134 The Inner Chamber

who would lead into all the truth that there was
in Himself, not as a matter of knowledge or doc-
trine, but into its actual experience and enjoyment.
And then He prays that in this living truth, as it
dwells in the Word, and is revealed in Him by the
Spirit, and the Father would sanctify them. " For
their sakes," He says, "I sanctify Myself that
they themselves may also be sanctified in truth."
And He asks the Father in His power and love
to take charge of them, that His object — to
sanctify them in the truth, through His word
which is truth — may be realised, that they, like
Himself, may be sanctified in truth. Let us
study the wonderful lessons here given in regard
to God's word.

*' Sanctify them in Thy truth, Thy word is
truth." The Great Object of God's Word Is
TO Make us Holy. No diligence or success in
Bible study will really profit us unless it makes
us humbler, holier men. In all our use of Holy
Scripture this must be definitely our main ob-
ject. The reason there is often so much Bible
reading with so little real result in a Christ-like
character, is that "salvation, through sanctifi-
cation of the Spirit and belief of the truth," is
not truly sought. People imagine that if they
study the Word and accept its truths, this will
in some way, of itself, benefit them. But experi-
ence teaches that it does not. The fruit of holy
character, of consecrated life, of power to bless
others, does not come, for the simple and most

Holiness — The Chief Aim of Bible Study 135

natural reason that we only get what we seek.
Christ gave us God's Word to make us holy, it
is only when we make this our definite aim in
all Bible study, that the truth, not the doctrinal
truth, but its Divine quickening power, impart-
ing the very life of God, that it contains as a seed,
can open and impart itself to us.

" Sanctify them in Thy truth. Thy word is
truth.'' It is God Himself Who alone Can
Make us Holy by His Word. The word, sepa-
rate from God and His direct operation, cannot
avail. The word is an instrument: God Himself
must use it. God is the alone Holy One. He
alone can make holy. The unspeakable value of
God's word is that it is God's means of holiness.
The terrible mistake of many is that they forget
that God alone can use it or make it effectual.
It is not enough that I have access to the dis-
pensary of a physician. I need him to pre-
scribe. Without him my use of his medicines
might be fatal. It was so with the scribes.
They made their boast of God's law; they
delighted in their study of Scripture and yet
remained unsanctified. The word did not sanctify
them, because they did not seek for this in the
word, and did not yield to God to do it for them.

" Sanctify them in Thy truth. Thy word is
truth." This Holiness Through the Word
Must Be Sought and Waited for from God in
Prayer. Our Lord not only taught His disciples
that they must be holy; He not only sanctified

136 The Inner Chamber

Himself for them, that they miglit "be sancti-
fied in truth, but He brought His words and His
work to the Father with the Prayer That He
Would Sanctify Them. It is most needful to
know God's word and meditate on it. It is most
needful to set our heart upon being holy, as our
first and chief object in studying the Word. But
all this is not enough; everything depends upon
our following Christ in asking the Father to
sanctify us through the Word. It Is God^ the
Holt Father, Who Makes Us Holy, by the
Spirit of holiness who dwells in us. He
works in us the very mind and disposition of
Christ who is our sanctification. "There is
none holy but the Lord''; all holiness is His
and what He gives by His holy Presence.
The tabernacle and temple were not holy in virtue
of cleansing, or separation or consecration. They
became holy by the incoming and indwelling God.
His taking possession made them holy. God even
so makes us holy through His word bringing
Christ and the Holy Spirit into us. And the
Father cannot do this except as we tarry before
Him, and are still, and in deep dependence and
full surrender give ourselves up to Him. It is in
the prayer offered in the Name, and the fellow-
ship, and the faith of the Great Intercessor —
"Sanctify me through Thy truth, Thy word is
truth," that the Father's sanctifying power will
be found, and our knowledge of God's word truly
make us holy.

Holiness — The Chief Aim of Bible Study 137

How sacred the Morning Watch! The hour
specially devoted to the Soul's yielding itself up
to God's holiness, to be sanctified through the
Word. Let us ever remember, the one aim of
God's word is to make us holy. Let it be our
continual prayer "Father, sanctify me in Thy
truth."

XXX

PSALM CXIX AND ITS TEACHING

"Oh how love I Thy law; it is my meditation all
the day. Consider how I love Thy precepts. Yea, I
love them exceedingly."

In Holy Scripture there is one portion wholly de-
voted to teaching us the place which God^s Word
ought to have in our esteem, and the way we can
secure its blessing. It is the longest chapter in the
Bible, and, with hardly an exception, in every one
of its 176 verses, we have, under different names,
mention made of the Word. Anyone who really
wants to know how to study his Bible according to
God^s will, ought to make a careful study of this
Psalm. There ought to come a time in his life
when he resolves to study its teaching and carry it
out into practice. How can we wonder that our
Bible study does not bring more spiritual profit
and strength, if we neglect the Divine Directory
it offers us for that study. It is possible you have
never read it once through as a whole. If you
have not time, find time, some free Sabbath hour —
or why not some free week day hour ? — in which
you read it through and try to take in its chief
thought, or at least to catch its spirit. If you
find it difficult to do this by reading it once, read
138

Psalm cxix and Its Teaching 139

it more than once. This will make you feel the
need of giving it more careful thought. The fol-
lowing hints may help you in its study : —

1st. Note all the different names under which
God's Word is spoken of.

2nd. Note all the different verbs expressing
what we ought to feel and do in regard to the
Word. Let this lead you to consider carefully
what the place is that God's word claims in your
heart and life, and how every faculty of your be-
ing—desire, love, joy, trust, obedience, action is
called out by it.

3rd. Count and note how many times the
writer speaks in the past tense of his having kept,
observed, stuck to, delighted in God's testimonies.
How many times he expresses in the present tense
how he rejoices in, loves, and esteems God's law.
And then how, in the future tense, he promises
and vows to observe God's precepts to the end.
Put all these together and see how more than a
hundred times he presents his soul before God as
one who honours and keeps His law. Study this
especially as these expressions are connected with
his prayers to God, until you have a clear
image of the righteous man whose fervent, effec-
tual prayer availeth much.

4th. Study then the prayers themselves and
note down the different requests he makes with re-
gard to the Word, whether for the teaching to un-
derstand and the power to observe it, or for the
blessing promised in the Word, and to be found

I40 The Inner Chamber

in doing it. Note especially prayers like " Teach
me Thy statutes/' " Give me understanding." Also
those where the plea is " according to Thy Word.''

5th. Count the verses in which there is any
allusion to affliction, whether from his own state
or from his enemies, or the sins of the wicked or
God delaying " to help him " ; and learn how it is
in the time of trouble that we need God's Word
specially, and that this alone can bring comfort
to us.

6th. Then comes one of the most important
things. Mark how often the little pronoun Thou,
Thine, Thee, occurs, and how often it is under-
stood in every petition, " Teach Thou me, "
" Quicken Thou me," and you will see how the
whole psalm is a prayer spoken to God. All the
Psalmist has to say about the Word of God,
whether with regard to his own attachment to it,
or his need of God's teaching and quickening, is
spoken upwards into the face of God. He be-
lieves that it is pleasing to God and good for his
own soul, to connect his meditation and thoughts
on the Word, as continually and as closely as possi-
ble, by prayer, with the living God Himself.
Every thought of God's Word, instead of drawing
him off from God, leads him to fellowship with
God.

The word of God becomes to him the rich and
inexhaustible material for holding communion
with the God Whose it is and to Whom it is meant
to lead. As we gradually get an insight into these

Psalm cxix and Its Teaching 141

truths we shall get a new meaning from the single
verses. And when, from time to time, we take a
whole paragraph with its eight verses, we shall
find how they help to lift us up, with and through
the word, into God^s presence, and into that life
of obedience and joy which says, " I have sworn,
and will perform it, that I will keep Thy right-
eous judgment/' " Oh how I love Thy law ; it is
my meditation all the day/'

Let us seek by the grace of the Holy Spirit to
have the devotional life, which this Psalm reveals,
wrought into our morning watch. Let GoD^s
Word every day, and before everything else, Lead
IJs TO God. Let every blessing in it be a matter
of prayer, very specially our need of Divine teach-
ing. Let our intense attachment to it be our child-
like plea and confidence that the Father will
help us. Let our prayers be followed by the vow
that as God quickens and blesses us, we shall run
the way of His commandments, and let all that
God's word brings ourselves make us the more
earnest in longing to carry that Word to others,
whether for the awakening or the strengthening of
the life of God in the soul.

XXXI

THE HOLY TRINITY

"For this cause I bow my knees to the Fatheb
that He would grant you, that ye may be strengthened
with power theough His Spirit in the inward man;
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,
to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in
LtOYE, may be strong to know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the
fulness of God. Now unto Him that is able to do
exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think, according to the power that worketh in us,
(the Holy Spirit), unto Him be the glory in Christ
Jesus for ever and ever. Amen." — Eph. iii. 14t21.

These words have often, and not without good
reason, been regarded as one of the highest ex-
pressions of what the life of a believer may be on
earth. And yet this view is not without its dan-
gers, if it fosters the idea that the attainment of
such an experience is to be regarded as something
exceptional and distant, and hides the blessed
truth that, though in varying degree, it yei is
meant to be the certain and immediate heritage of
every child of God. Each morning each believer
has as much the right as the need to say: My
Father will strengthen me to-day with power, is
strengthening me even now, in the inner man
through His Spirit. Each day we are to be con-
142

The Holy Trinity 143

tent with nothing less than the indwelling of
Christ by faith, a life rooted in love, and made
strong to know the love of Christ. Each day we
believe that the blessed work of being filled in
with all the ftdness of God is being prepared and
carried on and accomplished in us. And each day
we ought to be strong in the faith of God's power,
and be giving Him glory in Christ, as able to do
above what we ask and think, according to the
power of the Spirit working in us.

The words are, among many other things, re-
markable for the way in which they present the
truth of the Holy Trinity in its bearing on our
practical life. Many Christians understand that
it is right and needful at different times in the
pursuit of the Christian life, to give special at-
tention to the three Persons of the Blessed
Trinity. They often feel it diflBcult to combine
the various truths into one, and to know how to
worship the Three in One. Our text reveals the
wondrous relationship and the perfect unity. We
have the Spirit within us as the power of God, and
yet He does not work at our will or His own. It
is the Father who, according to the riches of His
glory, grants us to be strengthened "through the
Spirit in the inner man.^' It is the Father who
does exceeding abundantly above what we ask or
think "according to the Power that worketh in
us.'' So far from the presence of the Spirit within
us being to us instead of God, He renders us more
absolutely and unceasingly dependent on the

144 The Inner Chamber

Father. The Spirit can only work as the Father
works through Him. We need to combine the two
truths — a deep reverent, trustful consciousness of
the Holy Spirit as indwelling, with a continual
and dependent waiting on the Father to work
through Him.

Even so with Christ. We bow our knees to God
as Father in the name of the Son. We ask Him to
strengthen us through the Spirit with the one
object, that Christ may dwell in our heart. So the
Son leads to the Father and the Father again re-
veals the Son in us. And then, again, as the Son
dwells in the heart, and it is rooted and grounded
in love, drawing its life out of Divine love as its
soil, bringing forth fruits and doing works of
love, we are led on to be filled with all the fulness
of God. The whole heart with the inner and outer
life becomes the scene of the blessed interchange
of the operation of the Holy Three. As our hearts
believe this we give glory through Christ to Him
who is able to do more than we can think by His
Holy Spirit.

What a wonderful salvation this of which our
heart is the scene; the Father ever breathing His
Spirit into us, and by His daily renewing fitting it
to be the home of Christ ; the Holy Spirit ever re-
vealing and forming Christ within us, so that His
very nature, disposition, and character becomes
ours; the Son imparting His life of love, and
leading us on to be filled with all the fulness of
God.

The Holy Trinity 145

This is meant to be our everyday religion. Oh !
let us worship the Three-One God in the fulness
of faith every day. In whatever direction our
Bible study and our prayer lead us, let this ever
be the centre from which we go out and to which
we return. We were created in the image of the
Three-One God. The salvation by which God
restores us is an inward salvation; it is nothing
to us if it is not wrought in our heart and en-
joyed there. The God who saves us can do it in
no other way than as the indwelling God, filling
us with all His fulness. Let us worship and wait ;
let us believe and give Him glory.

Have you ever noticed in Ephesians how the
three Persons of the Trinity are ever mentioned
together.

i. 3. The Father, Jesus Christ, spiritual or Holy

Ghost blessings.
1. 12, 13. The Father, to the praise of His Glory,

in Christ, sealed with the Holy Spirit.
i. 17. The Father, Our Lord Jesus, the Spirit of

Wisdom.
ii. 18. Access through Christ, in one Spirit, to the

Father.
ii. 22. In Christ, a habitation of God, through the

Spirit,
iii. 4-9. The mystery of Christ, hid in God, preached

by the Grace of God, revealed by the Spirit.
iv. 4-6. One Spirit, One Lord, One God and Father.
V. 18-20. Filled with the Spirit, giving thanks to

God, in the name of Christ.
vi. 10-18. Strong in the Lord, the whole armour of
God, the sword of the Spirit, praying in. the
Spirit

146 The Inner Chamber

As you study and compare these passages, and
seek to gather up their teaching in some true and
humble conception of the glory of our God, notice
specially what an intensely practical truth this
of the Holy Trinity is. Scripture teaches little of
its mystery in the Divine nature, almost all it has
to say has reference to God's work in us, and our
faith and experience of His salvation.

A true faith in the Trinity will make us strong,
bright, God-possessed Christians. The Divine
Spirit making Himself one with our life and
inner being; the Blessed Son dwelling in us, as
the way to perfect fellowship with God; the
Father, through the Spirit and the Son work-
ing out day by day His purpose — ^that we be filled
with all the fulness of God.

Let us bow our knees unto the Father ! Then
the mystery of the Trinity will be known and
experienced.

XXXII

IN CHRIST
« Abide in me, and I in you."— John xv. 4.

All instruction proceeds from the outward to the
inward.

When some knowledge has been obtained of the
actual, in words or deeds, in nature or history,
the mind is prepared to seek for the inner mean-
ing hidden in them. It is even so with the teach-
ing of scripture concerning Jesus Christ. He is
set before us as a man among us, before us, above
us, doing a work for us here on earth, continuing
that work for us still in heaven. Many Christians
never advance beyond this, an external exalted
Lord, in whom they trust for what He has done
and is doing for them and in them. They know
and enjoy but little of the power of the true mys-
tery of Christ in us, of His inward presence, as
an indwelling Saviour.

The former and simpler view is that of the
first three Gospels; the latter marks the Gospel
of St. John. The former is the aspect of truth
presented in the Scripture doctrine of justifica-
tion. The latter is the teaching concerning the
union of the believer with Christ and his continual
147

148 The Inner Chamber

abiding, as specially taught in St. John and the
Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians.

To the Christians for whom this book is writ-
ten and who all ought to be preparing to carry
Christ to their fellowmen, I cannot say too ear-
nestly : See that this abiding in Christ and Christ
in you be not only a truth you hold in its right
place in your scheme of Gospel doctrine, but that,
as a matter of life and experience, it animate all
your faith in Christ and intercourse with God.
To be in a room means to have all that there is
in it at your disposal, its furniture, its comforts,
its light, its air, its shelter. To be in Christ, to
abide in Christ, oh ! to know what this means.
It is not a matter of intellectual faith or con-
ception, but a spiritual reality.

Think who and what Christ is. Consider Him
in the five states or stages that mark and reveal
His nature and work. He is the Incarnate
One, in whom we see how God's Omnipotence
united perfectly the Divine and human nature.
Living IN Him we are partaking of the Divine
nature, and of eternal life. He is the Obedient
One, living a life of entire surrender to God and
perfect dependence on Him. Living in Him our
life becomes one of complete subjection to God's
will and continual waiting upon His guidance.
He is the Crucified One, who died for sin and
to sin that He might take it away. Living in
Him we are free from its curse and dominion, and
we live, like Him, in death to the world and our

/

The Christ 149

own will. He is the Eisen" One, who lives for
evermore. Living in" Him we share His resur-
rection power, and walk in newness of life, a life
that has triumphed over sin and death. He is
THE Exalted One, sitting on the throne and
carrying on His work for the salvation of men.
Living IN Him His love possesses us, and we give
ourselves to Him to use in winning the world
back to God. Being in Christ, abiding in Him,
means nothing less than that the soul is placed
by God Himself in the midst of this wonderful
environment of the life of Christ at once human
and Divine, utterly given up to God, in obedience
and sacrifice, wholly filled with God in resurrec-
tion life and glory. The nature and character
of Jesus Christ — His dispositions and affections.
His power and glory — ^these are the elements in
which we live, the air we breathe, the life in
which our life exists and grows.

The full manifestations of God and His sav-
ing love can come in no other way than by in-
dwelling. In virtue of Christ's Divinity and
Divine power. He can, just so far as we abide in
Him, dwell in us. As far as the heart with its
love is given to Him in faith, and the will in
active obedience, He comes in and makes abode
in us. We can say, because we know: — Christ
liveth in me.

And now, to come to our main purpose, if this
life, Christ in us and we in Him, is to be our
real working-day life, its spirit must be renewed

150 The Inner Chamber

and strengthened in the personal intercourse with
God with which we begin the day in the morning
watch. Our access to God, onr sacrifice to God,
our expectation from God, must all be in Christ,
in the living fellowship with Him. If ever you
feel that you want to get nearer to God, to realise
His presence or power, or love, or will, or work-
ing, more fully, in one word to have more of God
— come to God in Christ. Think of how, as man
on earth, He drew nigh to the Father in deep
humility and dependence, in full surrender and
entire obedience, and come in His spirit and dis-
position, in union with Him. Seek to take the
very place before God that Christ has taken in
heaven, that of an accomplished redemption, of
a perfect victory, of full entrance to God's glory.
Take the very place before God that Christ took
on earth on His way to the victory and the glory.
Do it in the faith of His indwelling and enabling
power in you here on earth; count confidently on
your approach being accepted not according to
your attainment, but according to the uprightness
of your heart's surrender, and the completeness of
your acceptance in Christ, and you will be led on
in the path in which, Christ living in you and
speaking in you, will be truth and power.

XXXIII

HIMSELF ALONE

"When Jesus therefore perceived that they would
come and take Him by force to make Him a king, He
departed again into a mountain Himself alone." —
John vi. 15.

The Gospels frequently teU us of Christ's go-
ing into solitude for prayer. Luke mentions his
praying eleven times. Mark tells us in his very
first chapter, that after an evening when all the
city had been gathered together at the door, and
He had healed many, " in the morning rising up
a great while before day. He went out, and de-
parted into a solitary place and there prayed."
Before He chose His twelve apostles "He went
out into a mountain to pray, and continued all
night in prayer to God." This thought of com-
plete retirement appears to have deeply im-
pressed the disciples, giving rise to John's use of
the significant expression, "He departed into a
mountain Himself Alone," as Matthew also had
written, "He went up into a mountain apart to
pray, and when the even was come. He Was There
Alone.'' The man Christ Jesus felt the need of
perfect solitude. Let us humbly seek to find out
what this means.

1. Himself Alone. Entirely by Himself,
151

152 The Inner Chamber

alone with Himself. We know how much inter-
course with men draws us away from ourselves
and exhausts our powers. The man Christ Jesus
knew this too, and felt the need of coming to
Himself again, of gathering all His powers of
renewing the consciousness of what He was and
what He needed, of realising fully His high des-
tiny, His human weakness, His entire dependence
on the Father.

How much more does the child of God need
this. Whether it be amid the distraction of
worldly engagements or religious service, whether
it be for the maintenance of our own Christian
life, or the renewal of our power to influence men
for God, there is ever an urgent call to every be-
liever to follow in His Master^s steps, and find
the place and the time where he can indeed be
with himself alone.

2. Himself Alone, with spiritual realities.
It is in the entire withdrawal from contact with
the things that are seen and temporal that we are
free to peld ourselves fully to the powers of the
unseen world, and can allow them to master us.
Jesus needed time and quiet ever afresh to realise
the power of the kingdom of darkness which He
had come to contend with and to conquer, the
need of this great world of mankind which He
had come to save, the presence and the power of
the Father whose will He had come to do. !N"oth-
ing is more indispensable in Christian service
than that a man should at times set himself

Himself Alone 153

to tliink intensely on the spiritual realities with
which as a matter of knowledge he is so familiar,
and which yet often exercise so little power on
the heart and life. The truths of eternity have an
infinite power; they are often so powerless be-
cause we do not give them time to reveal
themselves. Himself alone — this is the only
cure.

3. Himself Alone, with God the Father. It
is sometimes said that work is worship, that ser-
vice is fellowship. If ever there were a man who
could dispense with special seasons for solitude
and fellowship, it was our blessed Lord. But He
could not do His work or maintain His fellow-
ship in full power, without His quiet time. He
felt the need as man of bringing all His work,
past and future, and putting it before the Father,
of renewing His sense of absolute dependence on
the Father's power, and absolute confidence in
the Father^s love, in seasons of special fellowship.
When He said : " the Son can do nothing of Him-
self,^' "as I hear so I speak," He was but ex-
pressing the simple truth of His relation to God;
it was this that made His going apart a necessity
and an unspeakable joy.

Would God that every servant of His under-
stood and practised this blessed art, and that the
Church knew how to train its children into some
sense of this high and holy privilege, that every
believer may and must have his time when he is
indeed — himself alone with God. Oh! the

154 The Inner Chamber

thought to have God all alone to myself, and to
know that God has me all alone to Himself.

4. Himself Alone, with the Word. As man
our Lord had to learn God's Word as a child;
during the long years of His life in ISTazareth,
He fed on that Word and made it His own. In
His solitude He conferred with the Father on
all that that Word spoke of Him, on all the will
of God it revealed for Him to do.

In the life of the Christian, it is one of the
deepest lessons that he has to learn, that the Word
without the living God avails little; that the
blessing of the Word comes when it brings us
to the living God; that the Word that we get
from the mouth of God brings the power to
know it and to do it. Let us learn the lesson:
personal fellowship with God in secret alone can
make the word to be life and power.

5. Himself Alone, in prayer. What an un-
speakable privilege prayer is as it allows a man
to lay open his whole life to God, and to ask for
His teaching and His strength. Just try for a
moment to think what prayer meant to Jesus,
what adoring worship, what humble love, what
child-like pleading for all He needed. As little
as we can conceive of this aright, can we realise
what blessedness awaits the man who knows to
follow in Christ's steps, and to prove what the
utmost is that God can do to one who makes this
his chief joy — to be with Him, Himself alone.

Himself Alone. How deep the words open

Himself Alone 155

up to us the secret of the life of Christ on earth,
and of the life that He now lives in us. Of the
life that He lives in us hy His Holy Spirit, this
is one of the most blessed elements, that He re-
veals and imparts to us all that the Word means
— Himself alone.

XXXIV

SOUL-WINNING
*' He that winneth souls is wise." — Pbov. xi. 30.

In an article in The Student Movement for
February, 1901, on "A Spiritual Awakening/' by
H. W. Oldham, I have found the following sen-
tences:— "In the constitutions of most Students'
Christian Unions it is stated that the Chief Aim
of the S. C. Union is to lead students to become
disciples of Jesus Christ. But if the question
be pressed home, ^ Are students actually being won
from indifference and unbelief to faith in Jesus
Christ?' the reply must be that, although in a
few instances such is the case, in the majority
of Unions it is very doubtful. Some Unions,
discouraged by previous failure, have become
sceptical as to the possibility of winning men for
Christ in circumstances so difficult as their own.
They may carry on to some extent Traditional
Methods of Aggressive "Work, but have ceased
to expect to do more than strengthen such as
already have faith. The Executive of the Gen-
eral College Department have definitely set the
Spiritual Awakening of Students in the fore-
front of their policy. If the local Unions will
rally round the Executive we may fully expect to
156

Soul-Winning 1 57

see God working in the lives of those round about
us. The love that won us can win many. It is
right to recognise the seriousness of adopting this
aim. It Involves Close Companionship with
Jesus Christ in Holy Living, in Self-Sacri-
fice, IN Loving Service; it requires submission
to the correction and control of God^s Spirit. . .
We must lift the aim of Winning Students for
Christ out of the background in our work and
Place It First. Our Unions have more than
sufficient mechanical workers. They need men
and women with definite aims, who will think
and pray, and pray and work, until their Union
is a fit instrument in God's hand for transform-
ing the lives of students.''

In an editorial in the same number, we read
with regard to the Day of Prayer, " There are
many confessions, and many requests which we
shall have to make on the day of prayer; but for
ourselves we feel that the most urgent must be
prayer for a spiritual awakening. We have been
gradually recognising the fact that the most of
our Unions Are not Winning Men for Christ,
and some have begun to realise with dismay that
the fact has caused them very little sorrow. ^It
is a misfortune certainly that students have not
been won, but — ^what can we do?' Truly a
spiritual awakening is needed; needed in our own
hearts. When it comes we shall soon find out
what to do. Where is the passionate longing to
help men? Where is the urgent prayer for our

158 The Inner Chamber

brother that will not be denied? At the very
heart of the whole matter is our lack of interest.
It is only what interests us that will influence
men. It is only when deep down among the
eternal interests of our soul there flames the
Passionate Desire to Lead Men to Christ,
that we shall meet those who need our help, and
who will welcome it. It is only words and deeds
which burst from the Burning Passion op De-
sire TO Help Men, which find opportunities of
influencing lives. For it is only where there is
a desire like this, that the Holy Ghost is a fellow-
worker with men. And without him we are
powerless either to find those who are ready, or
having found them, to give them help. Shall
we not unitedly ask that A Passion for Souls
may be borne in each of us on the day of prayer ? ''
To this let me add an extract from an article
on " Indian Needs," in the January number of
the same paper. The writer (Eev. W. E. S. Hol-
land, formerly Trav. Sec. B. C. C. U.) had spoken
of the central purpose in the creation of Mission
Colleges being "the personal influence which the
teachers would be able to gain over their pupils."
He had then said : " Yet I have it on the authority
of teachers in four of the largest Indian Mission
Colleges that their time is so fully taken up with
lecturing that they have neither time nor spirit
for personal intercourse with their students. Five
or six hours a day, with several more in prepara-
tion, in an Indian climate, leave a man ex-

Soul- Winning 159

hausted, with neither time nor nervous energy
for That Intensest of all Work, Individual
Dealing with a Man about His Soul/'

He concludes his paper with these words:
" 40,000 men are wanted, not less, if all India is
to hear. Yet one almost shrinks from an appeal
for men. Why? Lest men should come to be
cumberers of the ground. For Missionary
Work Is after all, only Soul-Winning. And
there is nothing to make a man a soul-winner in
India Who Has not Been One at Home. A
sense of duty, or of the great need, may Bring a
man to India. Nothing can enable him to Live
year by year a missionary Life out here, save such
a burning love for Christ as Constrains to Sac-
rifice AND A Life of Soul-Winning at Home.''
What thoughts these extracts suggest in regard
to the work of soul-winning ! That it is the first
great requisite in the missionary. That going to
a mission field will not necessarily make a man a
soul-winner. That it is at home, ere one enters
the mission field, that the spirit of self-sacrifice
and soul-winning must be got and be exercised.
That to train its members in the art of soul-win-
ning is one of the chief aims of the Student Move-
ment, as the practice of it will be the measure of
its strength and success. That the danger ever
threatens of our lapsing out of this into tradi-
tional and mechanical methods. That continual,
fervent, united and private prayer ought to be
made for more love to souls, and continual,

y^

i6o The Inner Chamber

earnest, united and private efforts be put forth
in every Students' Union that our companions
may be won for Christ.

The great characteristic of the Divine life,
whether in God, or in Christ, or in us, is — ^love
seeking to save the lost. Let this be the Christian
life we cultivate; a love that finds its blessed-
ness in saving men. This life can be cultivated
in no other man than by close personal attachment
to Jesus, and daily fellowship with Him as a
Friend we love. It is in the inner chamber that
this fellowship with the Father and the Son is to
be maintained. It is in this specially that the
father who seeth us in secret will reward us
openly.

XXXY ,

THE POWER OF INTERCESSION"

"Tell me wherein thy great strength lieth."
— It is the question we fain would have answered
of the men who of old, and in later times, as in-
tercessors for others, have had power with God,
and have prevailed. More than one, who has
desired to give himself to this ministry, has won-
dered that he has found it so difficult to rejoice
in it, to persevere, and to prevail. Let us study
the lives of the leaders and heroes of the prayer
world; maybe some of the elements of their suc-
cess will be discovered to us.

The true intercessor is a man who knows that
God knows of him that his heart and life are
Wholly Given up to God and His Glory.
This is the only condition on which an officer at
the court of an earthly sovereign could expect to
exert much influence. Moses and Elijah and
Daniel and Paul prove that it is so in the spiritual
world. Our blessed Lord is Himself the proof of
it. He did not save us by intercession, but by
self-sacrifice. His power of intercession roots in
His sacrifice : it claims and receives what the
sacrifice won. As we have it so clearly put in
the last words of Isaiah liii. : "He poured out
His soul unto death, and was numbered with the
i6i

1 62 The Inner Chamber

transgressors, and He bare the sins of many,"
— study this in connection with the whole chapter
of which it is the crown — '^ and made intercession
for the transgressors." He first gave himself up
to the will of God. There he won the power to
influence and guide that will. He gave Himself
for sinners in all-consuming love, and so He won
the power to intercede for them. There is no
other path for us. It is the man who seeks to
enter personally into death with Christ, and gives
himself wholly for God and men, who will dare
to be bold like Moses or Elijah, who will persevere
like Daniel or Paul. Whole-hearted devotion and
obedience to God are the first marks of an inter-
cessor.

You complain that you do not feel able to pray
thus, and ask how you may be fitted to do so.
You speak much of the feebleness of your faith
in God, and love to souls, and delight in prayer.
The man who is to have power in intercession
must cease these complaints — ^he must know that
he has a Nature Perfectly Adapted to the
Work. An apple tree is only expected to bear
apples, because it has the apple nature within it.
" You are God^s workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus unto good works.'' The eye was created to
see : how beautifully fitted it is for its work ! You
are created in Christ to pray. It is your very
nature as a child of God ; the Spirit has been sent
into your heart — ^what to do? To cry Abba
Father, to draw your heart up in child-like prayer.

The Power of Intercession 163

The Holy Spirit prays in us with groanings that
cannot be uttered, with a divine power which our
mind and feelings cannot understand. Learn, if
you would be an intercessor, to give the Holy
Spirit much greater honors than is generally
done. Believe that He is praying within you,
and then be strong and of good courage. As you
pray, be still before God to believe and yield to
this wonderful power of prayer within you.

But there is so much conscious sinfulness and
defect in our prayer? True, but have you not
learned what it is to pray in the Name of
Christ? Does the name not mean the living
power? Do you not know that you are in Christ
and He in you ? That your whole life is hid and
bound up in His? and His whole life is hid and
working in you ? The man who is to intercede in
power must be very clear that, not in thought
and reckoning only, but in the most actual, living,
divine reality, Christ and he are one in the work
of intercession. He appears before God clothed
with the name and the nature, the righteousness
and worthiness, the image and spirit and life of
Christ. Do not spend your chief time in prayer
in reiterating your petition, but in humbly,
quietly, confidently claiming your place in Christ,
your perfect union with Him, your access to God
in Him. It is the man who comes to God in
Christ, bringing to the Father that Christ in
whom He delights, as his life and his law and
only trust who will have power to intercede.

*^'

164 The Inner Chamber

Intercession is preeminently a work of faith.
JSTot the faith that tries only to believe the prayer
will be heard, but the faith that is at home amid
heavenly realities. A faith that does not trouble
about one's own nothingness and feebleness, be-
cause it is living in Christ. A faith that does nol;
make its hope depend upon its feelings, but upon
the faithfulness of the Three-One God, in what
each person has undertaken to do in prayer. A
faith that has overcome the world, and sacrifices
the visible to be wholly free for the spiritual and
heavenly and eternal to take possession of it. A
faith that knows that it is heard and receives what
it asks, and therefore quietly and deliberately per-
severes in its supplication till the answer come.
The true intercessor must be a man of faith.

The intercessor must be a Messenger — one
who holds himself ready, who earnestly offers him-
self personally to receive the answer and to dis-
pense it. Praying and working go together.
Think of Moses — his boldness in pleading with
God for the people was no greater than his plead-
ing with the people for God. We see the same in
Elijah — ^the urgency of his prayer in secret is
equalled by his jealousy for God in public, as
he witnessed against the sin of the nation. Let
intercession be always accompanied, not so much,
by more diligent work, as by the meek and humble
waiting on God to receive His grace and spirit,
and to know more definitely what and how He
would have us work. It is one thing, it is a great

The Power of Intercession 165

thing, to begin to take up the work of interces-
sion— the drawing down to earth of the blessings
which heaven has for its every need. It is a
greater thing as intercessor personally to receive
that blessing, and go out from God's face, know-
ing that we have secured something that we can
impart. May God make ns all whole-hearted,
believing, blessing-bearing intercessors.

XXXVI

THE INTEECESSOE

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man
availeth much. Ellas was a man subject to like pas-
sions as we are." — Jas. v. 16, 17.

There is nothing that so much weakens the force
of the call to imitate the example of Scripture
saints, as the thought that theirs are exceptional
cases, and that what we see in them is not to be
expected of all. The aim of God in Scripture is
the very opposite. He gives us these men for
our instruction and encouragement, as a specimen
of what His grace can do, as living embodiments
of what His will and our nature at once demand
and render possible.

It was just to meet the so common error 'alluded
to, and to give confidence to all of us who aim at
a life of effectual prayer, that James wrote:
"Elias was a man subject to like passions as we
are," As there was no difference between his
nature and ours, or between the grace that
wrought in him and works in us, there is no
reason why we should not, like him, pray effectu-
ally. If our Prayer is to have power, we must
seek to have somewhat of Elijah^s spirit. The
i66

The Intercessor 167

aspiration, Let me seek grace to pray like Elijah,
is perfectly legitimate, is most needful. If we
honestly seek for the secret of his power in prayer
the path in which he trod will open to us. We
shall find it in his life with God, his work for God,
his trust in God.

Elijah Lived with God.

Prayer is the voice of our life. As a man lives
BO he prays. Not the words or thoughts with
which he is occupied at set times of prayer, but
the bent of his heart as seen in his desires and
actions, .is regarded by God as his real prayer.
The life speaks louder and truer than the lips.
To pray well I must live well. He who seeks to
live with God, will learn so to know His mind and
to please Him, that he will be able to pray accord-
ing to His will. Think how Elijah, at his first
message to Ahab, spoke of " the Lord God, before
whom I stand.^' Think of his solitude at the
brook Cherith, receiving his bread from God
through the ravens, and then at Sarepta through
the ministry of a poor widow. He walked with
God, he learned to know God well ; when the time
came, he knew how to pray to a God whom he had
proved. It.ia_Qnly out of a lif a .of .true- fellowship
with God that the prayer of faith can be born.
Let the link between the life and the prayer be
clear and close. As we give ourselves to walk with
God, we shall learn to pray.

Elijah Worked for God.

He went where God sent him. He did what

1 68 The Inner Chamber

God commanded him. He stood up for God and
his service. He witnessed against the people and
their sin. All who heard him could say:
"Now I know that thou art a man of God, and
that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is truth.''
His prayers were all in connection with his work
for God. He was equally a man of action and a
man of prayer. When he prayed down, first the
drought and then the rain, it was, as part of his
prophetic work, that the people, by judgment and
mercy, might be brought back to God. When he
prayed down fire from heaven on the sacrifice, it
was that God might be known as the true God.
All he asked was for the glory of God. How
often believers seek power in prayer, that they
may be able to get good gifts for themselves. The
secret selfishness robs them of the power and the
answer. It is when self is lost in the desire for
God's glory, and our life is devoted to work for
God, that power to pray can come. God lives to
love, and save, and bless men: the believer who
gives himself up to God's service in this, will find
in it new life in prayer. Work for others proves
the honesty of our prayer for them. Work for
God reveals alike our need and our right to pray
boldly. Cultivate the consciousness, and speak it
out before God, that you are wholly given up to
His service; it will strengthen your confidence in
His hearing you.

Elijah Trusted God.

He had learned to trust Him for His personal

The Intercessor i6o

needs in the time of famine; he dared trust Him
for greater things in answer to prayer for His
people. What confidence in God^s hearing him
we see in his appeal to the God that answers by
fire. What confidence in God's doing what he
would ask, when he announced to Ahab the abun-
dance of rain 'that was coming, and then, with his
face to the earth, pleaded for it, while his servant,
six times over, brought the message, "There is
nothing.'* An unwavering confidence in the
promise and character of God, and God's personal
friendship for himself, acquired in personal inter-
course, and proved in work for God, gave
power for the effectual prayer of the righteous
man.

The inner chamber is the place where this has
to be learned. The morning watch is the training
school where we are to exercise the grace that can
fit us to pray like Elijah. Let us not fear. The
God of Elijah still lives; the spirit that was in
him dwells in us. Let us cease from the limited
and selfish views of prayer, which only aim at
grace enough to keep us standing. Let us culti-
vate the consciousness that Elijah had of living
wholly for God, and we shall learn to pray like
him. Prayer will bring to ourselves and to others
the new and blessed experience, that our prayers
too are effectual and avail much.

In the power of that Eedeeming Intercessor,
who ever liveth to pray, let us take courage and
not fear. We have given ourselves to God, we

170 The Inner Chamber

are working for Him. "We are learning to know
and trust Him. We can count on the life of God
in us, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, to lead us
on to this grace too: the effectual prayer of the
righteous man that availeth much.

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Like Christ.

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Northfield Addresses, 1895.

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Jesus Himself

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Life. Ye Are the Branches.

Have Ye Received the Holy We Can Love All the Day.

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